Circular Open Source Fashion

Zoe Romano introduce us into the systems behind fashion and the textile industry. The focus was on alternative systems such as circular fashion, agile fashion and open value chains.

Our Assigment was:

“The students will have to design and fabricate a modular reconfigurable system or

seamless garments. The soft connection can be designed to be implemented in the

assembly of a garment, being applied on the seams or it can be designed as single

elements that act as construction parts of a garment.”

I really love the assignment of this week. I was excited to create a surface out of geometrical pieces because it enables to work with completely different ures. We started our assignment manually - with paper and pen.

I was inspired by a natural pattern. Scales of a fish.

I had this idea right in the beginning but it took me some time to come from the shape of a fish scale to an how an interlocking pattern.

After some several tries on paper and chats with my team mates, I came to a model which is a creative interpretation of a fish scale. But I really liked it and therefore I was curious how it will look like in Rhinoceros.

I transferred my draft from paper into the program Rhinoceros. I used one quarter, two circles and freehand lines as the fundamental geometric figures. I got rid of the redundant lines with the function: 'trim' and grouped the whole figure to determine the scale of 4×7 cm.

I the first run I decided to use synthetic leather. The settings for the laser cutter for synthetic leather is:

• Speed: 50% Power: 45% Frequency: 50%

After a successful cut we chose jeans as the next material. The settings for jeans are:

• Speed: 40% Power: 65 % Frequency: 50% (for precise cutting with jeans it might be better to increase the power because otherwise
  the edgings will be damaged and the fabric dissolves itself.)

I was quite satisfied with the pattern as well with the interlocking system but I want to cut it again with an other material and a bigger size. I chose black synthetic leather and grey felt. The settings for felt are:

• Speed: 4% Power: 5% Frequency: 50%

Due to time issues I could not fabricate a whole garment but I used my modules as decoration on existing shirts. As you can see, it is possible to use this interlocking system as a seamless solution.

To demonstrate that the interlocks can be integrated in existing textiles without sewing I cut small wholes in a shirt where I can stick the modules into.

With a tutorial I tried to design my first garment with interlocking elements. I took me a lot of time to use Rhino and its basic function.

I mainly worked with the comands:

scale, mirror, group and connect

It is a very rough time and I hope I can deepen my knowledge in the field of using Rhino.

Like I said in the beginning I really liked the assignment of this week. I am satisfied with the result although it is not the end product has not really similarities with fish scales. But it´s good to see what emerges by being creative. I would love to see a finished garment like a skirt or top out of this pattern. Regarding my first garment draft in Rhino it was highly time intensive to work with it because I am not used to it, yet. I installed my Rhino in German which is not helpful because all tutorials are in English. So be aware when it comes to language selection.