3D Printing Has Arrived at Paris Fashion Week!

3D Printing and Fashion

3D printing just for mechanics? Not anymore, it has entered the fashion industry. People are describing it as an industrial revolution, disrupting all aspects of the fashion game. According to Fashion United, the fashion industry is valued at $3 trillion dollars, which accounts for 2 percent of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Pretty big, isn’t it?

One of the coolest events in the fashion industry is Fashion Week held in New York, London Milan, and Paris. They essentially mark the beginning of the two major seasons, Spring and Autumn. It is an opportunity for fashion designers around the world to present their new collections to buyers, journalists, and prominent people. The last fashion show in the series is held in Paris. The place known as ‘the city of love’ and the capital Haute Couture.

 

The Monumental Dress

During the recent haute couture fashion week in Paris, Iris Van Herpen debuted the first Vegan 3D printed dress. The stunning creation was made with a biomaterial similar to waste cocoa bean husks, with a colour scheme to coincide with the classic Magnum ice cream. Van Herpen teamed up with the Belgian ice cream master Magnum to make this showpiece.

Although this is a new phenomenon for the fashion world, we can’t say the same for Van Herpen. She first used 3D printing in her fashion designs in 2009, and since has presented many designs with 3D printed aspects all around the world. She said in her 2016 Vogue interview – “We couldn’t print to make it flexible yet, so I had to be inventive in how I was incorporating it into my collections. The good thing about it now is that flexible printing is much more durable than it used to be, so you can really do the usual stuff to it—you can wash it, you can press it.”




We are now 6 years on from that interview, and the 3D printing world has evolved exponentially, thus allowing her to create such an intricate and stunning dress. Furthermore, many global stars took to the 2022 Met Gala red carpet donning her most recent haute couture designs.

A new age is coming for the fashion world, and we can’t wait to see what’s next
 

Iris Van Herpen metamorphism at Paris Haute Couture Week 2022