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3. Circular Open Source Fashion



I made a very EXCITING discovery this week thanks to paying attention to what can be male and female closing systems on existing garments!! Little hint : it's strechable by nature.

click here if you want to be spoiled - this is the front

click here if you want to be spoiled - this is the back

Research & Ideation

I have a star addiction... especially if they have odd branches.



1. Pokemon card from official Pokemon website.

2. David Maitland photography from his book "Les formes de la Nature"

3. own photo from a Laurie Fabre concert a few weeks ago

4. own photo from DTF transfer sheet, to be ironed on garment from the upcycled collection of my clothing swap association

*5. own photo from a Belgian cinema magazine from the 50s

Stars are just triangles. Here are wonderful examples of previous alumnis with triangles.

References & Inspiration

I like how volume is brought and how it looks like a knit.

Also very good example of kits, laser-cut leather goods is YURS

Tools

Process and workflow



Paper prototying

This module was obtained by combining the open source kirigami style with the star shape. I tried two different options on paper with the same male/female system.



I tried with all branches of the stars but because it was important for me to have branches of different length and degrees the middle triangles did not join well in the middle. That's when a multidisciplinary approach is needed in my opinion and although we are not meant to add other closing systems, I could not help but think of funky haberdashery that would look cute on it, so I added holes

Good tessalation explanations :)

2D design

I have 3 types of modules with the same operating male and female systems 1. Thus creating endless assembly possibilities.

Testing connections

I had to move holes further from edges and thicken stars borders because my materal would rip off otherwise. Edges size surely have to be adapted depnding on the material. i did not have leather so I used wool.

{ width=300 align=left } { width=300 align=right }


Nesting

Thanks to nesting website.

Laser cuting

Assembly

In order to see the design better, I adopted an upcycling approach and imagined it as a patch on a used cloth.


Reflection on material wasted

Decisions are important to not waste precious material, however I had the chance to see an alumni example (Andreas Komodromou) who made stars in a tesselated way and it looked too regular to my taste as it needs to be isocele triangles for the branches. Therefore, I willingly chose not to tesselate my design while knowing it was not the most optimal material consumption. I liked the challenge of asymetry better, but did not have enough time to dig better nesting.

It was already a scrap of fabric from my previous job.

Fabrication files

  1. File: Modules ↩

  2. File: Laser cut sheets ↩