Can 3D-printed Fashion be Sustainable? | Variable Seams | PI Apparel
In this talk the presenter shares a personal narrative that began with a lifelong struggle to find well‑fitting clothing, which sparked an interest in custom fashion and sustainability. They critique the historical shift from bespoke tailoring to mass‑produced standard sizes, highlighting the resulting overproduction and environmental impact. The core of the presentation is an overview of how 3D printing can enable on‑demand textile creation. The speaker walks through the basic workflow (CAD model → slicer → infill) and demonstrates a simple flat‑infill method using Cura’s Gyroid pattern. They then explore four more advanced approaches: (1) drawing custom 2‑D yarn patterns and slicing them; (2) vertical printing that allows weaving between printed poles (based on a 2019 research paper); (3) printing independent modular links that regain drape, akin to modernized chainmail; and (4) bypassing the slicer entirely to generate custom print paths that can weave in three dimensions, a technique borrowed from ceramics. Throughout, the presenter discusses material challenges, noting that most current prints use nylon plastic, which is unsustainable. They introduce emerging bio‑based, biodegradable filaments from Beyond Plastic (bacterial PHA), Kyori (food‑waste‑derived), and Balena Science (stretchable bio‑polymer blend), and showcase a prototype garment made from these materials. The talk is framed by climate narratives from Naomi Klein and Daniel Wall, arguing that shifting societal stories—from fearing nature to collaborative stewardship—can drive systemic change. A case study with LVMH’s bioconcrete, made from invasive‑species waste, illustrates cross‑industry collaboration. The presenter concludes with future research directions: tensile testing of printed textiles, exploring diverse printer technologies (FDM, MJF, SLS, SLA, DIY liquid printers), and scaling the modular approaches in a PhD project. Audience Q&A touches on material stretch limits, printer types, health‑safety of skin‑contact plastics, and interest in collaborative research.
Chapters
The actual title has slightly changed. This is just because I threw it around a bit, and I think this will hopefully provide a lot more value to you because I'm not actually going to share much about what I'm doing necessarily, but more about what my vision for sustainability in this case, and also what, what, um, what role 3D printing plays in that. So yeah, if you've seen me walk around today at all, you probably have noticed that I'm quite tall, and throughout the years a lot of my friends would look at my heels look at me and ask, "Is that really necessary?" And as a tall person, you just get used to it, right? And I think every one of you here probably has had this experience of going into a certain store and just nothing fits. And in my case, there was this girl in my high school class, absolutely stunning, average height, always wearing heels. No one asked her a question. And at some point I was, you know what? I would like to look like her, so I'm going to shop where she shops. And I went to the Zara. And fascinatingly enough, when I went in there, any pants I tried, too short. Any jumpsuits I tried on made me feel like a shrimp. And it just went on and on. And I think it's a very interesting thing. And throughout the years, I've been fascinated with it. And so, that's where the story starts. This is me at 6 years old in my first ever designed dress. And obviously, it was made out of paper, so it was probably not that comfortable. But when people ask me, like, "OK, well, why fashion? When did that start?" It's literally something that has been— something that I've been drawn to from a very, very long time, so I don't actually know when it started. A little bit after that, I asked for sewing classes. Those are quite hard to find if you live in a very small village, but we did find it. What was really great about this is that the lady that taught me, she didn't just teach the sewing, she actually taught how to create a basic block, and there's a lot of math involved. And for me, that was eye-opening. Math has purpose in the real world. And beyond that, it's a lot of fun. And what I found really interesting about that is when you look at fit over time, we started off with a tailor, absolute perfect fit, right? But the problem with this is that that person needs to measure you, there's a bit of back and forth, it's very time-consuming, and thus it's very expensive. So we moved on from that, and we started pre-creating sizes that fit most people. And the benefit of this is that the price decreased, so nice clothing became available for so much more people. At the moment, though, we're running into downsides of that, and that is overproduction and the pollution that comes with it all, issues that I'm sure everyone here is aware of. And so what I think would be the solution to that is to kind of move back towards only producing when something's actually needed. But we don't do it in an expensive way. We utilize the technology that we have with all of these formulas to create something that's cheap. And to me, this seems like it's actually so simple. So I'm wondering, like, why don't we do this? And there is a couple different ways in which you can do it, and which already is being used. So for example, 3D knitting is something that is actually already done quite a bit. And this one's from Uniqlo. The other way to do this is 3D printing. And I don't think it's commercially quite there yet. You can see it now in the shoe industry. It's starting to come up. But it's not yet there for the wearables. And then you've got 3D weaving. I've seen a couple of experiments on this. Very, very interesting, especially this one. But I don't think there's anything more beyond those initial experiments. One of the things that I've come across is like 5 different ways in which I think you can actually 3D print textiles. And it's interesting that there's so many different ways. But before I get into any of those, how many people— and I would like to see a raise of hand— have actually 3D printed? And I'm not talking about making a 3D file and then sending it off and then something comes back, but actually doing the settings and doing the 3D printing. Okay. Okay. So I think in that case, it's beneficial that we talk a little bit about the process. So we start off with a 3D model that can be in any CAD software. And I've seen people use the weirdest software for even 3D animation to 3D print, but it's possible. And then you would send that off to the 3D printer, but actually, the 3D printer won't know what to do with this. And so you need a program in the middle that slices it up into layers, and then the 3D printer can understand it and build your design. And what the slicer program also does is to limit the amount of material you use and to make the model a lot lighter, is to generate an infill. And this is something you don't see on the outside, because there's just walls. But on the inside, you do see this pattern. So if we take the example of the heels, you would have to scratch open the heel to actually see that pattern. And there's— the slicer program that I'm using here is Cura. So you can see that dropdown list. Those are the different options that you have. And so this one, in this case, is the Gyroid infill. And if we translate that to textiles, we basically create this flat textile shape. Then we use the slicer program, and we say, OK, we don't want a top and a bottom. We literally want to see the inside of that pattern. And then you 3D print it, which will lead you something like that. The downside of this is that there's only— let me go on. The downside of this is that there's only 10 or so methods to create textiles. And if you know textile design, 10 different ways, that's nothing. So this is not that interesting. But at the same time, it's great for people that want to get into it because it's the absolute simplest way to 3D print textiles. And so one step beyond this is to start thinking about creating your own designs, your own textile, by drawing the lines, if you will. So you make a 2D image of whatever yarn you have in mind. You give that a certain height, and then you slice it and you 3D print it, which on a small scale looks something like this. And I hope that you're going to be able to see this very well, especially in the back. And on the bigger size, it looks something like the corset there. Whoops. At this point, is anyone wondering, well, isn't this a little bit silly? Because everything I've been talking about so far is flat. And we're 3D printing. Right? But what's interesting about this, and I think it comes a lot from people are thinking about, I want to 3D print textiles, right? And if you have a textile background, the thing that you're creating is something flat. And so the first thing you think of when you want to 3D print is to recreate that flat thing that you know. So at this point, let's move beyond that. And this comes from a research paper from 2019 by— let me try this— Haruki Takahashi and Ye-eun Kim. And what's fascinating about this one is that they're actually vertically printing it. So rather than having it on the printer like this, they printed in this direction. And the benefit of that is that you can actually start weaving in between those poles. And up until making this presentation, I've known about this method for a while. But I actually never tried it myself. And this is because as a content creator, the thing I focus on most at the moment is creating small textile modules like these that you then weave together by hand, which then creates your whole garment. And what I really like about it is that you can go from something very small and repetitive to something that you can actually wear. And what is good about that as a content creator is that people can understand this. This is simple enough. I'm using the first method. And it's something that people can follow. This method is actually really, really complex, and I had written down, you know, I'm just going to try this method and actually show the physical sample to you guys. Then I started reading into it a little bit more, and I need some time to actually create this file because this is not created by your classical software anymore. This is created using code, and then you create the print path, and I'll come back to that in a little bit. And I think one of the really big design flaws of everything that I've mentioned so far, especially if you're thinking about woven textiles, is that all of the yarns are able to kind of move a tiny bit in between each other. And what happens is that you get a really nice drape, Whereas for anything 3D printed, because of how the technology works, these yarns in between, they're fused together. And so you get a bit of an awkward drape. And so even if I show this, which is like the, let's say, nicest drape, it isn't still quite textile yet. And same for this one. I hope I can show it. Yeah. Which is even worse. It's just because it's a different type of infill, but it's It's just not there yet, right? So how do you move beyond that? And that's what this— the fourth method is by printing independent modules that then can move independently from each other. And that way you regain your drape. So I've got here one of the samples. And if you play devil advocate for a little bit and you look at this, you might wonder, well, Didn't we invent this in the Middle Ages? It's called chainmail. It's kind of clunky. It doesn't really look or feel that good. But then if you look at this sample, you might start wondering, well, actually, this is starting to look a lot more like a rough knit. And the difference is that this is a printer I have at home. This is a printer I wish I had at home. It's a lot more expensive, and it's a different technology altogether. And so for this method to really work, and I used iMaterialize here, you can upload your own models and 3D print it yourself. This is with a rubber-like material. This is the absolute smallest I could go with that technology. And so if you can see it here, it's still not quite completely something you would want to wear as a t-shirt, right? And so this is a technology or like a method to 3D print where I think it would be really cool if we can go just a bit smaller. And there are different 3D printing technologies, especially in dentistry, that can go way smaller. But there's not yet one that would work with textiles. So— but I think there's a lot of potential in this direction. And then I think anyone here that thought, you know, We're going to talk a little bit about sustainability. So, so far, what material do you think I'm printing with? Anyone? Just shout. Nylon. Nylon. Nylon. Yeah. It's more simpler than that. Plastic. No surprise there. But that doesn't really make sense if we're going to talk about sustainability, right? So I want to share one of my favorite quotes with you. Oh, sorry. Not yet. These are some of the comments I get on social media, definitely on the, let's say, more cynical side of things. And what I find really interesting about these comments is that a lot of them are very, very focused on the material alone. And I think maybe this is because people are more comfortable with simple things. Plastic, bad, done. We don't think about what else is around it, what's the system surrounding it, we're just thinking about the material here. And I think sometimes fashion brands kind of make use of that. And so we've got all of these problems, "Don't worry about it, we're using recycled plastic, so keep on buying, keep on using." This is from Sustainable Fashion Forum. I think they captured it really well in this meme. And so this is one of my favorite quotes that I want to share with you today. Our economy is at war with many forms of life on Earth. What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity's use of resources. What our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it is not the laws of nature. Oh, depressing. What's really great about this, and this is from a book about climate change from Naomi Klein, and what I found fascinating about this book is that she shares a lot about the climate research, but actually the most interesting about this book is that she talks about her vision for what she observed in humanity, and that's that the narratives that we share as humanity, they change our societies. And I want to take you a little bit along on what she shares. So we started off with a narrative of being afraid of nature. We revered nature, and that's— you can kind of see it in the art from that time where you've got waterfalls, you've got mountains, you've got lots of different things, and the humans are really, really small in the face of it all. And then a little while after, we started discovering— and this is the same tipping point as with the Taylor part that I shared in the beginning— it's the Industrial Revolution, where people started thinking, oh, actually, we can control water and fire, and we can create steam. We are the masters of nature. We own it. And this flipped our narrative completely, which means now we don't need to be afraid of nature. We have technology to shelter us. And so a lot of exploitation of resources started in this area. But it's not true. We're not the masters. And we can start seeing that quite a bit in most recent— changes, let's say, over the climate. And I think what we need is a new narrative. And so I think I found the answer in Daniel Wall's book, which I'll share a little bit more about, which is we need a new narrative of what I think is participation and collaboration. So yes, we are very powerful. We've proven that. We are definitely able to influence nature, but so can nature influence us. If we start collaborating and taking care of each other, then both will grow. I really love this graph from the book that I just mentioned. Basically, sustainability, that's your zero line, which is why I think a lot of sustainability is very constricting. Can't do this, can't use this material, can't do that. Whereas if you start thinking about, you know what, what if we can create new housing for people as well as create water in the desert? What if we can fly a plane and clean the air? And this kind of thinking, we will be able to flip that vicious cycle and go in towards a more greener area, as well as think way more creatively. About solutions. And that's all beautiful, but what does that mean in practice? And this is the first time when I was able to actually put that school of thought into practice for a project with LVMH. And what we did here is we used the waste materials of the removal of invasive species to create a bioconcrete. So removal of invasive species means there's more biodiversity, and then at the same time you get something pretty for your interiors. And that's nice, but it's not textiles. So this is the question that I've been thinking about lately, and I want to actually leave it with all of you. How do we bring it to fashion? How can we bring this school thought to fashion? I think most of it will be about collaborating with each other. And so for me specifically, because I'm in 3D printing, I've been looking into different companies that are working on bio-based flexible materials. And so one of the companies is Beyond Plastic. They're using a PHA base, which is made by bacteria, which is fully biodegradable. Then you've got Kyori, which uses food waste in order to create their filaments. And then the last one is Balena Science. And they use a 50/50 of bio-based mass and 50% of biodegradable polymers. And what's really fascinating about Belena Science is that it is actually stretchable, this material. And so I'm really excited for— today is actually the launch of our project, which is this one, and that's what I'm wearing today. And so I think what's really great about working with them is kind of having that vision for fashion the first time materialized, and I'm hoping and moving forward from here to start working more and more with brands that are also thinking about how to create something more sustainable. And then I was going to share one more method to 3D print textiles. And this is a very different way to do it. And what you do is the slicer program, you cancel it out. And what means if you cancel out the slicer program, you don't need those layers anymore. So you can go crazy. You've got all of the space within that 3D printer to go up and down and kind of start weaving. And at the moment, they're using this quite a lot in ceramics. And this 3D model, it actually isn't a 3D model anymore. It's more of a print path of how the printer is going to go. And then you end up with something like that. And this is something I'm hoping to do in my PhD moving forward in the upcoming years. So yeah, if you want to get involved or you're interested, let me know and I'm happy to talk about that. That was everything. Thank you so much. So the question is, how much can you stretch it before it breaks? And I mean, I'm not going to try it out with this one, but it is something that I want to do a little bit more, like, properly scientifically, because I have videos on social media where I just stretch it until the connections break, because everything is modular. So everything here as well is folded into each other, and usually I can pull it enough for the connections to break, but not actually the textile itself. So I've never pulled it so far apart that it actually breaks. So that'd be something very— I'm very interested to see tensile strength and stuff like that. But I need proper machines to test that. Yeah. I don't know. Any other questions or— [SPEAKING CHINESE] I don't know if you can see this, so you might need to come closer a little bit later, but I think you can get it to stretch. I think the, the most softest one, because this is not the most soft one that's on the market, you can stretch it, they say, up to 500%. But I don't know if that would be enough to actually try and fit into it, so that might be an interesting one. Any other questions? I was wondering which technology you use for printing, if it's FDM or SLS. So at the moment I'm printing from home, so I've got a couple FDM printers. So that's what I'm using mainly. And then the one here is MJF. So that's a different technology altogether, which is powder bed at the top of my head. And then I would like to work with more liquid printers. And there is— I don't know if you like building stuff yourself, but there is a way to use an old projector, remove the UV filter, and then you can build your own liquid printer. I've done that. And then I read a lot about how many— well, how toxic it is, the material. So I thought, okay, I'm not going to have this DIY printer at home anymore. So looking forward to having a lab to try out some of the other SLS and SLA type materials. Any other questions? Ah, perfect. Cancel the slicer stage. Okay. Am I able to go back into the slides? Yeah? Right, so usually what the slicer program does is making the layers. And what you do here, if you want to cancel out the slicer program, is you create a print path. Let me think about how I can make this as simple as possible. Basically, what the 3D printer needs is really simple, a location of where it is in space, a location, like the next location of where it needs to go to, and how much material it will lose at that path. And so in its really basic form, it's just a text format, like a text document that's really long. And so what you can do is you can say, OK, I'm now, rather than saying you're going to go from here to here, which is allowed with the slicer program, I want to go from here to there to there. And that's just not possible with the slicer program, but it is possible if I actually program the line, which is shown there. Then the printer will just follow that. And this is in something called Grasshopper, so it's a visual coding language. And if you're interested in it, I can talk more about it, probably actually show how it looks because that's a little bit easier. Does that make a bit more sense? Or— yeah? Okay. Any other questions? Okay. So there are a couple of skin-friendly materials, but I think the one that I know they've done tests and they say it's skin-friendly, it's still a plastic material. And I'm so hoping to look forward, hoping to see like the health and the skin tests also in the more biodegradable materials. And so far, because the two— out of the three biodegradables that I showed, only one of them is actually commercially on the market. The other two are in R&D stages. And so I think the plastic ones, there are ones that are free of health risks, roundabouts. But I think in the biospace, there is still a lot of room for improvement and also for that to be checked. Any other questions? Okay, cool. Thank you.
