Dutch designer Iris van Herpen‘s Haute Couture show ‘Voltage’ at Paris Fashion Week featured two 3D printed designs created in collaboration with Stratasys and Materialise. One was a black dress designed with Austrian architect Julia Koerner and 3D printed by Materialise.

The other, a skirt and cape, were created with artist and professor Neri Oxman from MIT’s Media Lab and 3D printed by Stratasys using their unique Objet Connex multi-material technology. This allows a variety of material properties to be printed at once, so hard and soft materials can both be incorporated into the same design. Van Herpen said:

I feel it’s important that fashion can be about much more than consumerism, but also about new beginnings and self-expression, so my work very much comes from abstract ideas and using new techniques, not the re-invention of old ideas. I find the process of 3D printing fascinating because I believe it will only be a matter of time before we see the clothing we wear today produced with this technology, and it’s because it’s such a different way of manufacturing, adding layer-by-layer, it will be a great source of inspiration for new ideas.

Iris van Herpen