3. Circular fashion¶
THE MERMAID¶
Inspirations¶
"You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." Jon Kabat-Zinn
I am inspired by the ocean, the coral reef to be exact. The organic lines and the sudtle movement creating this dreamy sense.
I found many amazing circular fashion projects that show the wild imagination and geometrical control of the designers and I like to introduce the following by designer Julika Welge :
Concept¶
Materials¶
Couldn't care for the ocean if you didn't care for recylcing.
I started expermenting with paper and felt to better understand the possibilites of connection between the puzzle pieces. then I started experemnting with softer fabrics.
As an open source project, I felt the need for this project to be aimed for individual and companies to use and recylce disgarded fabrics and garments by making a new piece of cloth. The idea is simple, use your old shirts, bedsheets even curtians to make anew fashionale piece. Most of which is made of soft fabrics. These types of fabrics work well with organic looks and adding movement . It can beautifylly shape to Coral look I am after.
First material to try was my husbnds old cotton shirt. Very soft and light. It was very beautiful to work with but found if pretty fast that most patterns out there don't work for such a soft fabric.
Second material was An old curtain velvet fabric from my flat. It was soft and maluable yet not as thin or fragile like the prievious cotton one for which the final designed pieces were made.
Pattern design and testing¶
To create the look of Coral, I was looking either for vertical lines with some organic movement or a spiral projected look. Throug my trials I found out that soft fabrics act differently and are able to squish and deform similar to water.
I was able to sum it down to 2 main interlocking concepts:
XYZ assembly Through having a pattern that moves in 2 dimention and another repetitive unit that connects the enire geometry.
Squish it method By using some simple concepts of Kirigami as using cuts in the middle of the repetitive unit adn squish it to create a 3d effect. Inspired by the corset at the start and later on by intesecting large units within small gaps.
The final result is made of two intersecting units that can move in multiple directions connecting with each other to create a steady piece that can handle movement and stretching as well as give the assembler the choice of how packed or stretchy it looks. The more connections you make the more dense the piece is.
This pattern may lead to zero waste.
Fabrication and Assembly¶
Using my curtain fabric, I started by drawing the pattern using Autocad and duplicating it to fit the fabric piece I have cut.
Afterwards, I laser cut it using these settings:
Speed : 2
Power : 60
Thickness : 1 mm
Using a Trotec laser cutting machine
Now it was all about Assymbly
Using extra lines of fabric some of which I obtained from leaving 1 cm extra space between the design location and the fabric piece edge. I created the back.
The final Product looks stunning on my beautiful model Norma Rashia.
Open Source¶
The Project is shared through oscircularfashion.com website. An Open Source Circular fashion catalogue by Fabricademy where anyone can browse,share and download circular designs. All the files uploaded to the website. Here is the Link
Downloads¶
Pattern file dxf
Full fabrication PDF