A technique could transform the ready-to-wear sector. The clothes made in a single model would be adapted to the desired style and size using heat. These industrially produced clothes could be remade indefinitely, helping to limit fast fashion.
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The first of these “made to measure” garments is a knitted dress, which can be shaped to suit your look and adapted to any body shape, once it has been sewn. A new technique developed by researchers at MIT in the United States allows special fibers to contract above a certain temperature, and thus to design the garment without additional cutting from the base garment. The dress 4D Knit Dress, is a dress in four dimensions, the fourth being time. Developed by MIT Self-Assembly Lab and Ministry of Supply, it boasts the possibility of transforming your style as you wish.
She is therefore created as a single model, with the famous fibers inserted along the entire length. Then, when it arrives in store, we put it on a mannequin with the customer’s body shape. A robotic arm then reworks the shape with a heat gun, to adapt it to the correct measurements and sculpt the desired style with precision. Thus, you can make a loose or tight dress, fitted under the chest or only at the waist.
Change the look of your dress without changing your dress
Note that we do not do this directly on the person because the gun still heats up to more than 200°C… If the garment resists washing without problem, you will therefore have to be careful when ironing! But this also means that it will be possible to transform the dress into another style if desired. This reuse of the same textile base for different dresses could thus limit disposable ready-to-wear, especially with the currently so harmful impact of fast fashion.
The dress will be sold in the coming weeks, in the store of Ministry of Supply, a ready-to-wear specialist which is launching these tailor-made dresses. We don’t yet have the prices, but they should be around 200 euros, like the brand’s current dresses. MIT researchers are now looking to apply their technology to clothing other than dresses. For the moment, it is especially suitable for knitted clothing, those that can easily be gathered, cinched or folded just by tightening the fibers.