Skip to content

3. CIRCULAR OPEN SOURCE + MODULAR FASHION

RESEARCH

“Technically, the dress designers of the future will probably need a basic knowledge of science and ergonomics and will almost certainly mould their garments, both in natural and man-made fibres, rather than cut and sew them”(Handley 1999: 99).


CIRCULAR ECONOMY

It's a systems solution framework that tackles global challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution. It is based on three principles, driven by design:

  1. eliminate waste and pollution,
  2. circulate products and materials (at their highest value),
  3. and regenerate nature (Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2023).

AGILE FASHION

Refers to a flexible and adaptive approach to designing, producing, and delivering fashion products. This approach values:

  1. collaboration,
  2. rapid prototyping,
  3. iterative design,
  4. allowing brands to minimize waste,
  5. reducing lead times,
  6. sustainable practices,
  7. promoting smaller, more frequent production runs,
  8. adaptability rather than mass production (Lowson and Peck, 2004).

MODULAR FASHION

Refers to clothing designed with interchangeable parts, allowing garments to be assembled and disassembled without sewing. Elements like sleeves, collars, or panels can be swapped or reconfigured using zippers, buttons, or other fasteners. Modular design dates back to the mid-17th century (Zhang et al. 2024).

SEAMLESS INTERLOCKING

It's a method for building a garment without sewing the parts.

TECHNO TEXTILES

Techno textilrs are fabrics that incorporate new technologies and new functionality into a traditional textile material (Braddock and O’Mahony 2002, 2007)

ZERO WASTE

Key principles in fashion:

  1. Pattern Optimization: Zero Waste Fashion relies on intricate pattern making to ensure that the entire fabric is utilized in the garment construction. Designers meticulously plan and cut patterns in a way that minimizes leftover scraps.
  2. Modular Design: Modular design allows for versatility and adaptability. Garments are designed in modules that can be combined or adjusted, creating different styles without the need for additional pieces. 3.Upcycling and Recycling: Embracing sustainable practices, Zero Waste Fashion often incorporates upcycled or recycled materials. This not only reduces the demand for new resources but also gives a new life to discarded textiles.
  3. Efficient Production Techniques: Implementing innovative production techniques, such as 3D knitting and laser cutting, contributes to reducing waste. These technologies offer precise cutting and shaping, minimizing errors and excess material.

TESSELLATION

It's a pattern of repeated shapes with no gaps or overlappig (Avella, 2018).

Mathematics have been a huge inspiration for fiber arts including quilt making, knitting, cross-stitch, crochet, embroidery and weaving (Harris, 1988).

Great article explaining tessellations can be found here.

Even better article explaining how to make them here.

MODULAR FASHION: INSPO

Brigitte Kock, a modular fashion designer who applies this method to 3D printing, introduces a new level of flexibility and innovation in garment design. The use of modular techniques in 3D-printed fashion allows materials to become more adaptable due to the precision cuts and unique assembly methods. This approach offers endless possibilities for customization, as various parts of a garment can be reconfigured or replaced, creating a dynamic and evolving wardrobe.

Personsoul is a Chinese fashion brand that embodies freedom, creativity, and sustainability in a future wasteland setting. It is inspired in a community that rebuilt their lives in an abandoned city. The brand has created a unique "Wasteland Utopia" lifestyle, where rugged beauty meets sustainability. Each piece of clothing is not only a testament to human ingenuity but also a call for a brighter, eco-conscious future, transforming desolation into hope and fashion into a movement. The pieces can be unzipped and assembled into different garments, e.g. a maxi skirt can also be a: top, mini skirt or a bag.

I see great potential in applying modular fashion techniques to 3D-printed garments, which I am planning to focus on during my final project. It is fascinating how the skillset for fashion design has evolved over the years. Now, you can become a fashion designer without knowing how to sew, which opens up endless possibilities for those who want to push the boundaries of fashion design.

ZERO WASTE: INSPO

Anouri, is a sustainable clothing brand designed by a 27-year-old Mohamed Youss, located in Taghazout, southwestern Morocco. The designer upcycles coffee and tea bags waste to create incredible jackets and trousers. By turning everyday waste into wearable art, Youss showcases the potential for fashion to contribute positively to the environment while producing functional and fashionable garments.

Unwasted is a project created due to collaboration between Odd Bird, a Scandinavian producer of alcohol-free wine, and designer Meng Du from Beijing. They created a unique bag made from grape marc, a byproduct of winemaking. The grape skins are dried, ground into powder, and blended with natural ingredients to form a sustainable leather alternative. This project transforms waste into a valuable, eco-friendly material, offering a next-generation vegan leather that is free from animal cruelty and fossil fuels, demonstrating the potential for cross-industry innovation to turn waste into something useful.

These projects inspire me to explore how 3D printing can harness waste biomaterials to design innovative, eco-friendly garments. By combining these two, we can rethink fashion’s relationship with waste and pioneer new possibilities for environmentally conscious design.

DESIGN PROCESS

At first, I had no clear vision of what I wanted to create. I was really drawn to Chet Lo’s designs, particularly his use of bold, spiked textures, so I knew I wanted to design something in a similar style. However, I needed to figure out how to create interlocking spikes that would stand out. I started searching for inspiration in nature, tessellations, and modular fashion and spent hours scrolling on Pinterest looking for inspiration and figuring out how to make my vision come true.

I wanted to create spikes by drawing 3x or 4x triangles, using additional triangles as interconnections to make the structure work. After some experimentation, I was able to make it work on paper, which felt like a big breakthrough in bringing this design concept to life.

I also explored origami fashion to see how those techniques could influence my design process. While the idea was intriguing, I had to consider the practicalities, like fabric usage, but it opened up new possibilities for structure and form in my work.

I visited a fabric store and found some beautiful red leather waste that immediately caught my eye. I knew right away that it was perfect for my project, and it added a new dimension to my design plans.

After seeing the colour of the leather, I remembered of a beautiful scarf top I recently saw on Eve-Lily, a maximalist fashion influencer. The shape of that top became another key inspiration for my design, blending it with the spikey Chet Lo-inspired elements I had already been working on.

I opened up Rhino to try and design my idea.

  1. Started by creating the initial triangular design using the Polygon: ByEdge command to make four identical triangles.
  2. Centered the design using the Move command and typing 0.
  3. Twisted the shape and began drawing lines to form four triangles at the top.
  4. Used the Split command followed by Point to extract and cut the lines from the bottom of the shape. After choosing the point, pressed Enter, clicked on the line, moved it, and then pressed Delete.
  5. Grouped the shape and lines using the Group command, selecting the shape and lines, then pressing Enter.
  6. Created small triangles at the edges for connection points.
  7. Grouped everything together using the Group command.

Then I experimented with creating spikes using fabric to see if the concept could translate into a tangible form. It worked well with a very thick fabric, which was a great discovery and encouraged me to keep pushing forward with this idea.

I found suede waste that was very similar in thickness to the leather waste I wanted to use for my project. This find helped me experiment further with the textures and structure I envisioned for the design.

Unfortunately, that didn’t work out as planned because the material was too soft. I began searching for other ideas and am now exploring inspiration from nature, such as fish scales and pinecones.

While researching pine cones, I discovered a plant called Sarcodes, also known as a snow plant, which really caught my interest and is now a source of inspiration for my design.

BLOODY NOT-SO-FLOWER

The snow plant is fascinating because of its unique appearance. Unlike most plants, it doesn’t rely on sunlight for energy, takes advantage of all this by parasitizing the fungi of the photosynthate from the tree, making it a rare and resilient species and somewhere between a flower and a parasite (Brian, 2005).

This uniqueness resonates with my current project. Much like the snow plant thrives in unconventional ways, my design journey is about finding beauty and function in unexpected places. Whether through waste materials, biomimicry, or unconventional techniques. The snow plant's resilience and ability to adapt reflect my philosophy in design: to seek out innovative, sustainable solutions that challenge traditional norms, just as the plant defies conventional expectations of what a flower should be.

The snow plant’s simplicity and adaptability helped me realize that my design solution needed to be straightforward as well. The answer? Keep it simple! Instead of overcomplicating the structure, I discovered that a square with cuts on two sides and inside two corners would give me the closest effect to the triangles and cones I had envisioned. This approach adds texture and dimension without being flat, capturing the geometric depth I wanted while staying true to a more minimal, effective design.

CONTINUATION OF DESIGN

The red leather isn't perfectly straight, but the approximate dimensions, if it were a rectangle, are:

  • 650mm x 450mm
  • 600mm x 400mm

I initially created the full pattern in Rhino by copying and pasting the squares, but quickly realized it wouldn't work because there were many duplicate lines, and the squares weren't aligned properly.

  1. So, I started over with a single square.
  2. To duplicate the elements accurately next to each other, I used: Transform -> Rectangular Array -> Number in X direction: 16 -> Number in Y direction: 11.
  3. Next, I used the Explode command.
  4. Followed by SelDup to select and delete the duplicate lines.
  5. Since I didn't want all my pieces to be cut in the same way, I needed to create pieces for the edges that would be four squares wide. I calculated and adjusted the edge pieces by manually deleting the inner cuts.
  6. There's likely a better way, but I was running out of time.

At the end I had over 300 pieces to assemble, which took many hours. After that, I did a photoshoot during sunrise on one of Barcelona's rooftops.

✦ˑ ִֶ 𓂃⊹
✦ˑ ִֶ 𓂃⊹

✦ˑ ִֶ 𓂃⊹

REFERENCES

    𖡎 Avella, A. (2018) ‘From the Plan to the 3D Model Through Folding. Case Studies in Fashion Design’, Advances in intelligent systems and computing, pp. 1455–1467. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95588-9_128.
    𖡎 Braddock, S. and O’mahony, M. (2002) Techno textiles revolutionary fabrics for fashion and design. London Thames & Hudson.
    𖡎 Braddock, S. and O’mahony, M. (2007) Techno textiles revolutionary fabrics for fashion and design. 2. London Thames & Hudson.
    𖡎 Capon, Brian (2005). Botany for Gardeners (2nd ed.). Portland, OR: Timber Publishing. p. 127. ISBN 978-0-88192-655-2.
    𖡎 Christopher, M., Lowson, R. and Peck, H. (2004) ‘Creating agile supply chains in the fashion industry’, International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 32(8), pp. 367–376. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/09590550410546188.
    𖡎 Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2023) Fashion and the Circular Economy, Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Available at: https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/fashion-and-the-circular-economy-deep-dive.
    𖡎 Handley, S. (1999) Nylon : the story of a fashion revolution : a celebration of design from art silk to nylon and thinking fibres. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press.
    𖡎 Harris, M. (1988). Common Threads: Mathematics and Textiles. Mathematics in School, 17(4), 24–28. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30214514.
    𖡎 Stefano Magistretti and Trabucchi, D. (2024) ‘Agile-as-a-tool and agile-as-a-culture: a comprehensive review of agile approaches adopting contingency and configuration theories’, Review of Managerial Science [Preprint]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11846-024-00745-1.
    𖡎 Zhang et al. (2024) ‘What is modular fashion: Towards A Common Definition’, Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 204, pp. 107495–107495. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2024.107495.

  1. FILE: RHINO ↩

  2. FILE: PDF ↩