3D Printing hits the fashion industry

3D printing has become the latest craze. It is the manufacturing process through which any three-dimensional object can be created using a digital model and involves the consecutive layering of material in different patterns to create the object. Although 3D printing has been around since the 1980s, it was only around 2010, and even more recently, that it became more commercially available and viable to use in different industries. 3D printers can now even be bought online, which are industrial robots able to follow computer-given commands.

It was in March last year that burlesque dancer and model, Dita Von Teese, had created a stir when she unveiled the world's first fully articulated 3D-printed dress. The gown, dramatic and revealing just as Dita loves it, was designed by Michael Schmidt and Francis Bitonti and revealed at the Ace Hotel in New York. The dress was said to be based on the Fibonacci sequence of numbers and was assembled from 17 pieces, dyed black, lacquered and adorned with over 13 000 Swarovski crystals.

You might be surprised that 3D printing was also used to create some of the items worn at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in November last year. Who would’ve thought! Victoria’s Secret, Swarovski, and 3D printing manufacturer Shapeways – who had also worked on Dita’s dress – had collaborated to give the Victoria’s Secret models 3D printed angel’s wings.

The wings were actually designed by an architect and not a designer, Bradley Rothenberg, who first 3D-scanned Victoria’s Secret angel Lindsay Ellingson to ensure they will accurately conform to her shape. Shapeways then 3D-printed the filigreed snowflake wings, which were finally encrusted with the Swarovski crystals that give Victoria’s Secret their trademark bling.

A pair of black wings was also created by the team, which were worn by fashion’s new “it” girl, Cara Delevingne. These wings took a lot less time and effort to make than the snowflake ones as they weren’t as intricate and dramatic. But they were still as beautiful, giving Cara an edgy look as the wings fanned out in a ribbon-like movement as she walked down the ramp.

These results of 3D printing have proved to be beautiful and unique and the sophistication of the creations did not give away that the items were not handcrafted. This definitely sets a standard of the possibility of many industries combining to create distinctive and different products. It also changes people’s perspectives on the fashion industry; that something as technologically advanced as 3D printing can be incorporated and used to, perhaps one day soon, create wearable and fashion-forward wear.

Cara Delevingne – Fashion’s New “It” Girl

Every once in a while, there’s a face that comes along in the fashion world that leaves the rest of the world breathless once discovered.

The world first took Cara Delevingne seriously in 2011 when she was seen in ad campaigns for Burberry and H&M. And after just two years, she was named model of the year last November at the British Fashion Awards. And it was an award that was well earned. She's been photographed by Mario Testino for the cover of British Vogue; she's appeared in ad campaigns for Chanel, Burberry, and H&M, among others; and she seems to have walked almost every runway in New York, London, Milan, and Paris for most major designers.

Recently she’s been seen in a small role in the film Anna Karenina alongside Keira Knightly and on the Victoria's Secret ramp modelling the Pink line for teens.

But even at only 21 years old these milestones and achievements, revered in the fashion industry, hardly seem to encompass the powerhouse that is Cara.

She has “the” look; the delicate mouth, the elfin cheekbones, the bushy eyebrows that need no introduction. Then there's her colourful lineage and background straight out of a movie script: her grandfather, Sir Jocelyn Stevens, was a prominent newspaper executive; her eccentric mother, Pandora, a personal shopper; her father, Charles, a handsome man about town; and her older sister Poppy, also a successful model and socialite.

But perhaps the best part of Cara, the part that her facial features and body language epitomise so intriguingly, is that punch-to-the-gut personality that make so many of the headlines about her. She’s witty, quirky, and enchantingly unpredictable.

A perfect fit for the fashion world, Cara gives the photographer what they want before they even realize they want it. She’s a photographer’s dream, daring and experimental, and has even gone pretty much nude in November last year for a shoot with Nick Knight for SHOWstudio and Garage magazine. She always manages to be classy and sultry – a combination not easily achieved.

Renowned photographer Mario Testino has called her “the new Kate Moss” – but this wild-child who cites Charlie Chaplin as her style icon and the Milan-based street-wear brand You Need This Shit as a favourite label – isn’t replacing anyone in the fashion world but is carving out her own niche.