A Designer’s 3D Printer Utopia

The fashion industry has long embraced technological change. In the 18th century, fashion was at the forefront of the British Industrial Revolution: While the first steam engines were roaring, textile factories were in full swing making fabrics. In the 1930s, scientists invented something called synthetic fiber, which made way for untold change, like that nice T-shirt you're probably wearing right now. Nylon, the first such fiber and a direct descendant of plastic, was then used to make absolutely everything: parachutes, panties, fishing line, shorts, cords. In today's world, all of that is commonplace. And maybe, in a few years, we'll think it's standard to download a file and print a dress at home.

Famed for its ability to produce teeth, guns, prosthetic limbs, and furniture (and basically any other object you can design on a computer), the 3D printer is a strong candidate to become the ultimate revolutionary technology of our time. People like the Dutch designer Iris van Herpen, who's made clothes for Björk; Karl Lagerfeld, in his 2015 collection for Chanel; and the Brazilian designer Pedro Lourenço have all used it to make shoes, accessories, and garments. They are in the vanguard of how this platform is being used. The 27-year-old Israeli designer Danit Peleg is also part of this group, and arguably with an even more innovative attitude.

Peleg, who got her degree from the Shenkar College of Engineering, Design, and Art, is the first person ever to 3D-print an entire collection at home. It required nine months of hard work, with a lot of study, many nights spent at the lab, and a considerable amount of help from technical professionals. Despite all the effort it required, she believes the process will soon be an everyday undertaking for anyone with an interest in it.

"People like to be independent," she said. "They want to do things themselves. The do-it-yourself culture is really strong. 3D printers are becoming less expensive and faster every month. I think a lot of people will be adapted to this technology in the near future."

A video about her projectwent viral, and she started to deliver lectures and workshops about it. The idea seemed to resonate. But even Peleg admits that not everything is great in this business. "Right now, it takes 300 hours to make a dress," she said. "We also don't have so many materials to experiment with."

According to the designer, it takes around 12 days to finish a piece made from Filaflex[A1] , a soft, rubber-textured filament. "It can be very challenging, but in the future, I believe the technology will evolve fast," Peleg said.

Like Peleg, Andrew Bolton, the curator in charge of the Manus x Machina exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, believes in a forthcoming 3D revolution. The theme of this year's Met Gala was "Fashion in an Age of Technology" — Claire Danes wore a gown that glowed in the dark — and the exhibition showed some printed pieces as well. Bolton also thinks that the technology will soon be available to everyone, and he celebrates how environmentally friendly it is. "There's no waste, whereas there's always waste with textiles," he told Bloomberg Pursuits.

Not everyone shares Bolton's and Peleg's optimism. Take, for example, Gabriel Menotti, an associate professor at the Federal University of Espírito Santo in Brazil and the curator of Approximately 800 cm³ of PLA, an exhibition that printed a huge amount of objects with PLA plastic for the Wrong (Again) New Digital Art Biennale.

Menotti believes that 3D printing is not a viable process in the short term. First, you have to buy a 3D printer (for around R$6,000 in Brazil, or more than $1,700 in the United States) and a lot of material. Then there's the length [RT2] of time it takes to print everything.

"What concerns me is how some very specific advantages often become the basis for a dangerously utopian, positivist argument that promotes technology as the universal solution for problems facing several industries," Menotti said, "as if it would make it possible to take control of the means of production and make manufacturing accessible to the masses, promoting local economies."

He isn't sure about all that talk of sustainability, either. "A lot of raw material it uses, like ABS, is plastics made from petroleum, which is a nonrenewable resource," he said. He added that energy prices would rise significantly. All of which means, if we are being realistic, that it may be a good technology for the fashion industry but access to it probably won't be so massive.

The real point is, the technology to print ourselves a rubber skirt is already out there. But it would be on each of us to buy all the equipment and learn how to handle it. For now, an easier way to make your own clothes at home is to go to a newsstand, buy a sewing magazine, and sew. And as we all know, being easy to use is what makes a technology popular.

This article was paid for by Copenhagen Fashion Summit and was created independently from VICE's editorial staff.