Ane Castro y Núria Costa

Through these past four years of studying, we have shown a special interest in the creation, development and innovation of textiles, and this has been the impulse of our project. With several doubts and near the conclusion of our Fashion Design studies, we discovered the need to experiment on this matter. For that, we looked for universities, labs or companies where we could acquire new knowledge and do internships.

We understand internships as an amplification of our studies and an opportunity that allows us to get closer to the working world in the area where we wish to work. After several attempts, we got the chance to enter the research world in the city of Eindhoven, in the lab at the epicenter of the TU/e campus.

Oscar Tomico, our tutor, opened us up to a tempting and enriching challenge: to do an exchange initiative with the students of the wearables department. Our work in the university was to tutor the different projects of the students giving them the necessary support in the materialization of pieces (confection, design and patterns).
Through this task we acquired technical knowledge, and, at the same time, we had the chance to use a lab to develop our own investigation. This was an important opportunity for us, and we’re very grateful for it.

At Eindhoven we took up a task as future designers, given that we believe that fashion design cannot stay away from all the improvements of contemporary society. It is our duty to try and apply those improvements to clothing. We thought how a body scanner, industrial embroidery machine and 3D printer can be introduced in the textile production making a more functional collection possible, and, from this idea, our project was born.

Will all virtual realities become the new realities? In a world where the barriers between the legal and the illegal are weak, where new technologies advance too rapidly to exercise control over them and human beings have the possibility to generate files that are equivalent to bodily parts, chaos is manifested. Privacy can’t find a hole where to hide, and because of that the identity of the human being is exposed, an easy prey for cyber delinquents.

This is the basis of our collection, the dualism of new technologies. The most profitable aspect of the latest improvements are worked through the development of our research, assuming all the benefits that come from working with 3D scanners, embroidery machines or 3D printers. We apply this research in the choice and the usage of materials and in the conceptualization of the collection.

We materialized a total of six looks with a futuristic and sporty aesthetic. There are pieces that are completely printed in the 3D printer or the industrial embroidery machine, and we added some pieces that are hybrids between the developed textiles and technic textiles such as spacer, neoprene and more.

Even if we experienced certain inconveniences along the way, it is possible to create a collection through industrial embroidery machine and 3D printer that is, above all, functional. We believe that we must take advantage of the tools that we currently have at reach.