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3. CIRCULAR OPEN SOURCE FASHION

RESEARCH AND INSPIRATION

My first idea for this projct on circular open source fashion and using the laser cutter for the first time was to make a series of interlocking shapes out of my logo design.

I made a few paper prototypes

While i liked this idea. I also felt that it was too simple and tried to come up with a more complex design (big mistake) and switched my idea to making a "Brimless Snapback hat"

My inspiration for this second iteration was a hat that has become popular in recent years. these brimless snapback hats have been popular with skaters and hipsters.

Here is an example:

photo by hbx.com (11 By Boris Bidjan Saberi x New Era Skull Cap)

FINAL IDEA

After bouncing back and forth, and trying to make the hat, i realized i wasnt very interested in the final iteration or spending the time to perfect it so i went back to the intial interlocking logo idea.

I thought that i could make a ghille suit style fabric that could be utilizez in different ways.

TOOLS

  • RHINO
  • LASER CUTTER
  • FABRIC

RHINO DESIGN

To create the intial design i modified my logo by adding a bottom flange that would make it harder for the pieces to come out of their slots, as the shape of my logo made the material want to pop out due to its alignment.

One of the tools that we were told about was OPEN NEST, a software that automatically nests your designs in the most efficent way possible.

However due to my lack of real rhino knowledge at the time, and because my designs were pretty simple, I decided to nest my designs manually.

When designing in Rhino, it is important to have your design be in Layers with RGB colors that the laser cutter softeware can understand.

Making the design this way allows you to program the laser cutter to cut your pieces out in the correct order.

Here is the basic design in rhino after being nested:

LASER CUTTING

Once the file is how you want in Rhino, you then print the file into the laser cutter software.

In our lab, we have boards of different materials and fabrics and different thicknesses.

Using that you find the settings for the fabric that you are using.

I was using a thin grey suede leather, and a camo ripstop nylon fabric.

My design has 16 interlocking shapes that I cut once of the leather, and twice out of the camo nylon.

TIPS & TRICKS.

  • It's helpful to tape or secure your fabric to the laser cutter bed so it lies as flat as possible. any wrwikles or lifts can have an impact on the final cuttings.
  • Make sure that you have color coded your design so that you can do any inside cuts before the outside so nothing shifts
  • Do a test cut, using a small square to make sure your laser cutting settings are correct

I had a few issues getting my inside cuts to be done properly. this happened because i was trying to make the laser cutter ENGRAVE those lines when they should have been CUT

ASSEMBLY

The fun part! and also very tedious / time consuming to interlock all the pieces.

I weaved each piece together, interlocking twice in each direction. this starts making the ghille type pattern.

The base fabric, 9 by 5 pieces in the top right was after being fully assembled and to see how much fabric i had to work with to create a design.

FINAL RESULTS

I tried a few options with the amount of pieces I had.

DESIGN 1

A face mask design by connecting all the pieces in a tube and adding a top piece.

DESIGN 2

There was not quite enough pieces for the face mask to fit comfortably and so i tried another iteration, a small duffle bag.

The Cool thing about the circular fashion week/concept is that everything is modular and can always be turned into another design.