Apr 11, 2017 | By Tess
Up-and-coming fashion designer Alexis Walsh, who specializes in 3D printed fashion, has unveiled her latest garment: the APEX COAT. Made in collaboration with designer Justin Hattendorf, the garment features beautiful 3D printed embellishments.
New York-based fashion designer Alexis Walsh came onto our radar a couple years ago thanks to her amazing 3D printed fashion collection LYSIS. The collection, which was inspired by the structures of viral formations, expertly combined traditional garment making (with richly colored flowing fabrics) with the rigid but intricate geometries that are achievable with 3D printing.
The up-and-coming designer is still perhaps best known for her eye-catchingly provocative 3D printed Spire Dress, which embellishes the wearer’s body with sharply detailed 3D printed tiles and miniature spires. The skin-bearing garment, one of our favorite 3D printed dresses, has gone on to appear in various magazines, 3D printing shows, music videos, and fashion shows, including New York Fashion Week and Germany’s Platform Fashion event.
Now, it is our pleasure to report that Walsh has unveiled yet another stunning 3D printed garment. Called the APEX COAT, the new piece was designed in collaboration with transdisciplinary designer Justin Hattendorf, who has experience in the fields of architecture, industrial, product, and fashion design.
APEX COAT is a knee-length black sleeveless jacket with striking 3D printed ornamentation. According to its designers, the coat “marries handcrafted embellishment and generative digital form.” In other words, the coat was realized through the combination of generative design (for which Walsh used a custom software application) and manual assembling techniques—an intersection which seems to drive Walsh’s work.
The striking ornamentation on the black garment comes in the form of 3D printed studs, no two of which are the same. The design for the studs was achieved through Walsh and Hattendorf’s custom software, which enabled them to use point and string of point variations to create the unique stud structures.
“These formations result in an array of structures that hug the body in sinuous curves, while the stark black of the coat’s fabric serves as a visual contrast to erode the rounded edges of the studs,” say the designers.
Interestingly, the software application used was precisely developed to combine tactile, manual garment making techniques with generative and digital modeling. That is, the stud design process began rather traditionally, with the designer manually demarcating (in the form of paper tailoring patterns) where the studs would be placed on the garment. The patterns were then photographed and uploaded into the simulation software, which subsequently generated randomized stud shapes and placement to fit the subtle curves and boundaries of the pattern.
The studs, each 3D printed from a translucent material, have been fitted with brass threading, which enables them to be manually screwed into the fabric and gives them an ethereal, “pearlescent” appearance, as the brass catches light through the translucent plastic of each stud. The studs were first prototyped using MakerBot 3D printers, but were ultimately made in collaboration with Voodoo Manufacturing.
(Images: Alexis Walsh, Justin Hattendorf)
Walsh and Hattendorf, who graduated from Parsons The New School for Design and the Pratt Institute School of Architecture, respectively, are expecting to debut their 3D printed garment at the Harvard Identities Fashion show on April 15, 2017. After its debut, the APEX COAT will also be featured at exhibitions for Berlin Fashion Week, as well as in Barcelona and Helsinki.
Posted in 3D Printing Application
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