You Can Now Design and Buy Custom 3D Printed Dresses Online

Most fashion designers strive to be original, but a team of former MIT students has taken that idea to the next level. According to FastCoDesign, Jessica Rosenkranz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg of Nervous System created a project that allows users to design and purchase one-of-a-kind Kinematics Petal Dresses. Thanks to a collaboration with a company called Body Labs, the dresses are printed using 3D body scans, ensuring that each garment is a custom fit for the designer.

By developing ways for customers to "co-create products" with them, designers Rosenkranz and Louis-Rosenberg write on their website that they hope to make design more accessible. One of their first attempts, the Kinematics Petal Dress 1 was created in 2014 out of 2279 nylon triangular petals connected by 3316 hinges. The newer version, shown above, was commissioned by Boston's Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) for the recently opened #techstyle exhibition. While it has fewer petals (around 1600), there is more variation in textile structure.

Kinematics Cloth website (screenshot)

After using the Body Shape Explorer, users can play around with the Kinematics Cloth online app (both of which are demonstrated in the video above) to make changes to the body shape, garment shape, pattern and density, and textile structure of the dress. According to FastCoDesign, this bespoke experience does come with a hefty price tag: Each dress costs between $6000 and $10,000.

[h/t FastCoDesign]