3. Circular Open Source Fashion¶
Research & Ideation¶
The Post-Couture Coolective Martijin Van Strien, 2025 Fabricademy 2020/2021 Maite Sosa Methol
Photos from:
I took as inspiration the work of Martijin Van Strien, he not only designed clothing that could be assemble without having to sew, but he also uploaded the files so that consumers could download them, personalize with their own measurements and fabricate them themselves. What I rally like was that the clothes weren't all made of the module, but simply build or connected with the joins, allowing to have a much clean look, but still having the essence of circular fashion and open-source mind.
I also finded interesting the top of Maite Sosa Methol, because she designed not a module, but joins that allows to build with bigger pieces, inspired in the art of weaving. So, what she did was to design different ways of how she could make this joins and be able to form in this case a t-shirt.
I took both these designers as inspiration for my final piece for this assignment, because I liked how they didn't really build completely the garments with modules, but found a way of using them as a substitute for sewing them.
Tools¶
Process and workflow¶
The first thing that came to my mind when we saw in the class the modules, where the grecas of a place in Mexico, Oaxaca, called Mitla. This is a very important place for Mexican culture; it is an archaeological site of an ancient civilization called Zapotecas.
Among other things, there is a central Palace that is cover in different types of grecas. Each of this have a meaning, they weren’t just simple decoration, some say they represent the gods, the elements, etc. So, having those as a starting point, I selected my favorite and extracted the geometrical form to design the module
What is a greca? It is basically a repetitive geometrical pattern
I decided to choose this one because I believe I could really work with it
Modules¶
So having the idea in mind I started to design the module in rhino, using a reticule to make it more exact.
Follow this steps to do a reticule in Rhino:
I imitated the shape of the Greca, but I still needed to find a form that would allow me to build with them. I founded really hard to make the modules connect, not really because of the way of connection but to make it resistible to hold the pull/stretch.
I did some test directly in rhino to verify the angles and dimensions, I did this by simply overlapping them and see if the edges and spaces where well placed and really worked. After this I did a quick test with paper, to see if the idea worked.
They all kind of did, but I knew that when I use fabric it wouldn’t, so I started to modify the design, trying to keep the original form as much as possible. I added some cuts in different places to see how it would look when interlocking them.
Design Iterations:¶
After a lot of testing in rhino, paper and felt... I finally made it!, it was easy to build, to connect and it could go in four directions, left, right, top and bottom. The last arrange I did was added at the ends some triangles or arrows to function as kind of like a padlock.
After having solved the module, i started to think what i wanted to do with it, I wanted something functional, something I would like to use in a future. So, I decided to go for a purse.
Purse¶
It was very difficult to get to the final form, mainly because I've never designed anything with textiles, and because I had a hard time imagining how my module could form a purse. So, after realizing that to make this bag I needed to have a body or more like a central piece that would connect everything, I started to design different ways of both use my pattern and also have a very good structure.
At the end I decided to make a central piece that still would allow me to build it with my module and not just used it as a decoration.
So, to designed, I extracted the connecting system to be able to form the bag by surrounding my modules, and they would form the main walls.
The way I exploded my module is the following:
Thinking of how to prevent the straps for separating, I decided to make a large base, that would already have them and avoid any problem. The thing was that it didn’t really fit in the laser machine that I used, so I had to re arranged it and ant the end sew them.
To verify that all matched I made a paper prototype.
Laser Cut¶
IMPORTANT: Verify the composition of your textile!, there are some that are toxic to cut in the laser cut. Search for the data sheet to know the materials they used to build the fabric. AVOID PVC!
This is not the first exercise of laser cut I made for this curse, In the week Digital bodies I cut the mannequin, so all the information regarding the use of the machine, along with the program SmartCarve is there, go check them out please since there is important documentation
I used the laser cut machine to first do a quick test with different materials, and determinate with parameters where the best for each textile. I used Felt and Denim (we already had the textiles in the node, so there wasn’t a real waste of material), I was almost certain that I was going to use denim, so that’s why I did a lot of test to find the perfect parameters so it wouldn’t burn more than necessary, but still give me a clean cut… , nonetheless it still wasn't was I was aiming for, so, I decided to go for real leather.
I wanted to find the least power I could use preventing burned surfaces, so first I used 20-30-40-50 of max power, with the same speed (20). 50 cut it clean, and 40 was almost there but not quite, so I tried with 45, it did cut but it still leaved some edged not completely cut, so I finally went for 48, and it perfectly cut it.
Purse Assembly¶
I discovered that when cutting leather, one needs to be careful because it will stain everything! So, before assemble the bag I clean the edges with a little sponge and some shoe cleaning solution. To assemble the bag, I began by connecting the walls made up of modules. Then attached them to the main piece, this way the purse was taking form by just joining all the loose ends to the ones of the principal structure. It started to get complicated when I was almost done because I could really work in the internal connections. The assembly time was 4hrs, mainly because of the thick of the leather and how hard it was to make the pieces go through the spaces.
Assembly videos¶
Pull/stretch test:
Complete assembly:
Outcome!¶
Go check the whole Library of Open Source Circular Fashion!
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Fabrication files¶
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Laser cut sheets This worked in my machine, but adjust it to yours! ↩