3D printing has been used to develop some new interesting fashion designs. At the 3D Print Show in London last October, there was a live catwalk featuring 3D printed wearables.

With Paris and New York Fashion Week in season, 3D printing is again on display.

In Paris, a Dutch designer exhibited 3D printed collections made on a Stratasys 3D printer:

Dutch designer van Herpen’s eleven-piece collection featured two 3D printed ensembles, including an elaborate skirt and cape created in collaboration with artist, architect, designer and professor Neri Oxman from MIT’s* Media Lab, and 3D printed by Stratasys. An intricate dress was also designed in collaboration with Austrian architect Julia Koerner, currently lecturer at UCLA Los Angeles, and 3D printed by Materialise, marking the second piece created together with Koerner and the ninth with Materialise.

The 3D printed skirt and cape were produced using Stratasys’ unique Objet Connex multi-material 3D printing technology, which allows a variety of material properties to be printed in a single build. This allowed both hard and soft materials to be incorporated within the design, crucial to the movement and texture of the piece. “The ability to vary softness and elasticity inspired us to design a “second skin” for the body acting as armor-in-motion; in this way we were able to design not only the garment’s form but also its motion,” explains Oxman. “The incredible possibilities afforded by these new technologies allowed us to reinterpret the tradition of couture as “tech-couture” where delicate hand-made embroidery and needlework is replaced by code.”

Van Herpen adds, “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.”

Learn more about Objet 3D printers at the company’s website.

In New York, designers will be sitting down with Shapeways to discuss Fashion in 3D.

Shapeways, a 3D printing design studio and marketplace that spoke at our Startup Showcase last fall, will host an interactive design experience and lectures on the future of fabrication at Manhattan’s Ace Hotel to explore how digital technology can revolutionize fashion.

Designers Michael Schmidt (famous for Lady Gaga’s bubble dress), Anna Sheffield, and Chris Habana will work with computer-aided design modelers to help guests create custom products using 3D printing on Feb. 9, in the hotel lobby. The all-day event will culminate with the unveiling of a 3D printed dress designed by Schmidt and Francis Bitonti.

At the Decoded Fashion Forum at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, Shapeways’ Director of Marketing Carine Carmy will chat with designer Kimberly Ovitz about 3D printing on the runway. Ovitz will debut her first 3D printed collection for AW13, one of the few times a designer collection has incorporated 3D printing.

A roundup of the top news On 3D Printing brought you from September 24 to September 28.

This week’s featured Fab Lab is the Fayetteville Free Library in upstate New York, which recently received $250,000 from the New York State Library Construction Grant to build out its facility. Senator Dave Valesky announced the funding at the library. Syracuse.com covered this announcement:

The lab and center will provide the community with access to technologies that are not currently available to the general public, and also will provide an “incubator” for individuals and small businesses.

Entrepreneurs will be able to work together, find resources to help develop ideas and get professional assistance.

A Fab Lab is a collection of machines linked by software that allows users to make things. In Fayetteville’s Fab Lab, it means using something called a Makerbot, or 3D printer that fits on a desktop.

Fayetteville Free Library’s website describes the motivation of the center:

The Fayetteville Free Library is excited to announce the addition of a new public service—the FFL Fab Lab. What exactly is a fab lab? According to Neil Gershenfeld, the Director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms and author of Fab: the Coming Revolution on Your Desktop-From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication, a fab lab is “a collection of commercially available machines and parts linked by software and processes developed formaking things (Gershenfeld, 12).” At the foundation of the FFL’s Fab Lab will be a MakerBot Thing-o-Matic 3D printer, made available to the library through a generous donation from Express Computer Services.

Via Syracuse.com.