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3. Circular Open Source Fashion

Key ideas and concepts to think circular fashion:

  • zero waste
  • modular desing
  • circular economy
  • regenerating
  • recycling
  • Closing the cicle: create/use systems where garments can be recycled or biodegrade at the end of their life cycle, reducing waste and allowing materials to be reused.

Research, References & Inspo

Week assigment: create a zero-waste modular system for open-source fashion

Modular design

=> is a strategy used to simplify a complex system

=> to assemble modules standardized interfaces are needed

=> the main body can be disassembled into different parts, or modules, and reassembled at the wearer’s

Some desing Inspirations and research

The image contains above => the work of Leen Stoffels, a textile designer that works with modular pieces that have more than one function. below => Flower Explosion by Nasia Burnet: Inspired by mass production, made of wool and is completely modular.

=> Stephanie Johnson and Carolina Delgado´s assigments where insperign and useful to understand the operation and the workflow of this task.

Modul

My final inspiration to star sketching was nature and my sorrunding. On my way to the BDC I found a tiny clover and decided to work with it.

I drew one leaf on paper thinking it would be nice to create the modul => then took a picture => erase de background and tried to recreate its shape in Rhino

Playing with its shape and form in Rhino I decided to work with a 4 leaf clover y and ended up with the following modul

Before I tried other materials I cutted with the lasser on paper to see how te interlock could work and what could I create from those moduls

Materiality

I decided to make something simple, small, with few moduls as its my first time desining with moduls and interlock. But I was really interested on trying it on diferent materials or textiles. We searched for materiale at the BDC and we found bioplastics pieces and some wool to felt.

Felt

This was a very nice experience. I had the chance to share my knowlege and practice in felt with my lab partners and we prepare a wet felt class for everyone at the BDC

Wet felting: process of using a combination of friction/agitation, soap and water to make felt out of wool fibres. The hot water and soap changes the pH of the wool and allows the scales on the fibres to open up. The soap also helps provide a lubricant and allows your hands to move around the fibres easily.

Laxta

I chose to work with a local raw wool that my instructor facilitated me at BDC, wich was really interesting to work with a raw material. This wool comes from the Latxa wich is the sheep breed of Euskal Herria, is raised primarily for its milk, intended for the production of Idiazabal cheese. It has a very long fleece of rough wool. It was suprised when my instructors told me that for years, latxa sheep’s wool has not been brought to market and has been treated as waste. Now a days there are some projects (the BDC included) that are trying to solve this issue and give life to the wonderful material

Latxa process

latxa wet felting

felt laser cut sample

Laser cut parameters:

Material: Handmade felt Thickness: 8 mm

CUT Speed: 400 Min. power: 33 Max. power: 35

My final result was this simple structure made up by 4 moduls, wich can be use as a lamp or a bracelet. I figure, more moduls will aloud the structer other uses and functions.

Bioplastic

With some bioplastic we found at the lab I made another sample just to play with another material

biop laser cut sample

Laser cut parameters:

Material: Biomaterial Thickness: 4 mm

CUT Speed: 70 Min. power: 30 Max. power: 33

DOUBLE PASS

biop modular structure

Tools

𖦹 Notes & thoughs 𖦹

  • I had material waste but both (wool and biop) can be reused
  • workin with simple structers aloud me to understand how modular and interlock system works, I want to incorporate it into my practice.