 I would like to thank the organizers and FAIC for the invitation to present my thoughts about 3D printed fashion here at Tech Focus 4. My first experience with 3D printed fashion was pretty unsettling. It happened in 2012 when I was the newly minted head conservator of the costume institute in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And that year, the department acquired its first ever 3D printed object. It was a startling two-piece garment called Skeleton that appeared in Dutch fashion designer Ivers van Herpen's Fall 2011 Capriole collection. Van Herpen created Skeleton without using traditional haute couture sewing techniques or even a sewing studio. Instead, she turned to engineers and manufacturers at Materialize, a Belgian company, to carry out selective laser sintering. As a trained textile conservator, I felt unprepared to address its novel materiality, which is made of sintered nylon powder. Of course, I'm familiar with nylon fiber, but this was different. The dress defies conventional notions of wearability. It's rigid and wraps around the body like a bony carapace, hence its name Skeleton. Unlike traditional fabrics, this material does not flex for the moving body, but rather the Skeleton actually holds all flesh and check through exterior pressure. Condition-wise, it was already pretty grubby with dirt embedded into its pores and soiling due to handling and display and even some makeup on it from the runway. Many of the fragile protrusions were also already broken. Fashion conservators typically mount garments on mannequins or dress forms. However, even with many options available to us, this was near impossible to dress. While it could press into the pliable flesh of a human, temporarily molding it into an idealized state, it would break if we forced it onto a static and unyielding mannequin that was not customized to its exact dimensions. So to mount it, we decided it translated best as a standalone wearable sculpture rather than as a garment placed onto a proxy body. With help from the Optic Conservation Department at the Met, we developed an invisible mount, which is what you see here. So once mounting was accomplished, our next task was to address its long-term preservation. While I asked the usual questions a conservator would ask regarding the long-term health of the material object, I was also curious about alternate methods of preservation, especially with regards to time-based media. We contacted Van Herpen to ask if she would share with us the code, printing resolution and specifications and other information about the post-printing finishing processes. Disappointingly, we were unsuccessful. I immediately thought about how, you know, how can we hack this situation? What if we 3D scanned the dress on our own and kept the code for our own use to print parts should we need to in the future? Would that work? Moreover, would that be ethical? You know, issues surrounding the authorship and intellectual property protections for 3D-printed garments are pretty complex. We've already heard about the complicated legal issues surrounding 3D printing by Sriba Kwajovi, but fashion has additional layers of complexity. First, in fashion, there's this idea of a lone creative genius, and this idea is fetishized, regardless of who actually designs or fabricates a style. Although there are some people that are now questioning this concept, and you see here a recent essay into whether this designation of fashion designers as gods and kings is viable anymore. But this idea of a lone creative genius still persists. Typically, in an atelier, the designer conceives the garment possibly through a sketch, or a word, or even a gesture, and then passes it off to the workshop leader who then shepherds the design through the appropriate stages until a prototype is available for the designer to accept or tweak. For example, this dress by Ray Kawakubo of Comde Garçon is considered a masterpiece by the designer herself. Primarily because it started as a crumpled piece of craft paper that she gave her patterners, those are the people that actually produce the designs that she conceives. And it took them several years and many attempts to finally achieve a garment that expressed what her vision was when she saw this crumpled piece of paper. So similarly, fashion designers adopt this model of dispersed labor to conceive, engineer, code, and produce 3D printed garments. They usually partner with engineers, programmers, and architects who can bring their ideas into and then out of the digital realm. As in the case of Ann Herpen, while there are many hands involved in the creation of her 3D printed garments, and she does indeed announce who her collaborators are and celebrates them. There really is still only one truly honestly celebrated creator amongst all, and that's Iris Van Herpen herself. This concept is clearly demonstrated at the Pierre Berger Yves Saint Laurent Foundation in Paris where Yves Saint Laurent's archives are held. His studio where he sketched his designs remain sacrosanct since his death. The foundation itself considers the sketches coming from his actual hand to be the ultimate sacred object worthy of preservation. So thus the sketches are held in the most secure and environmentally stable space. While the extensive archives of garments, towels, and samples are secondary and stored as such since they have passed through hands other than Saint Laurent's. There is only one sketch but there can be many garments. Even with these questions of authorship, fashion's functionality is a problem when it comes to securing legal protections of one's intellectual property. In the past decade, several websites like the one you see here, and there's even a fashion law institute at Fordham University, these have cropped up to address the complexity of fashion law. In the United States, a fashionable garment is not offered copyright protection since it has utilitarian function. A designer's best hope is to include features which can be identified separately from and are capable of existing independent of the utilitarian aspects of the garment. So ironically, the more utilitarian or wearable a look typically the less copyright protection it is afforded. In reexamining Van Herpen's hesitancy to share the code for skeleton, one must bear in mind the uneasy relationship that fashion has with intellectual property, as well as the concept of one creator even when there are many hands. 3D printing holds an even more uneasy position within the fashion system itself that conservators must grapple with. My experience with Van Herpen happened almost 10 years ago, and yet the conservation of 3D printed fashion has not become any easier. This is in part because of the rapid evolution of novel shapes and materials. But a far greater part of the unease I have in conserving 3D printed fashion lies within the limitations that the technique still has in creating fashion itself. So we all know that to best understand how to conserve an object, we need to look at how that object functions within the system that creates and uses it. Thus, for the remainder of this presentation, I am going to address the difficulties in producing truly functional 3D printed fashion, especially once we contextualize fashion within the broader workings of a fashion system that relies on a consumption model emphasizing mass production and replicability. My aim here is not to present a neatly bound answer to the question of how to materially preserve 3D printed fashion, but rather I hope to offer more nuance on the logic itself of 3D printed fashion. So in looking at the term 3D printed fashion, I think we all understand what 3D printed means, but are we all aligned with what fashion means? There is no single accepted definition for fashion, but a very good starting point is to understand fashion as a system of bodily adornment that changes in irrational ways. The only constancy to fashion is that it will change. Additionally, fashion, like all other designed objects, must be used to fulfill its function. And at its core, fashion is as commercial as it is in art. In examining the logic of 3D printed fashion, we can compartmentalize it into two areas. One type covers the torso and or possibly limbs. So let's think of garments like t-shirts, dresses, trousers, jackets. And the other type is worn in discrete localized ways as an accessory. So for example, necklaces, hats, shoes and belts. This might seem totally obvious and basic, but it actually has a significant impact on how 3D printed fashion is deployed. For garments that cover the torso and limbs, a significant amount of elasticity is needed to accommodate the flexing of joints and musculature. And of course, all the daily activities we engage in like sitting, standing and walking. Additionally, you know, humans crave comfort and we are pretty dirty and clumsy. And so we require body coverings that can be cleaned, maintained and repaired easily. This is why cloth, which constructs in several directions is collapsible and can be washed over and over is so perfect as a body covering. The typically static outputs of 3D printed objects are ill-suited to the required functionality of general clothing. And so are deployed most successfully in fashion only as discrete elements like shoesles, jewelry and fabric embellishments like buttons. While there have been some spectacular 3D printed fashions over the past decade, including the skeleton dress and other works by Van Herpen, their actual wearability is overstated. They function more or less sculptures that are activated through their temporary mounting onto a human body rather than as clothes. Besides their general rigidity, the 3D printed material itself does not function well under daily circumstances, in part because the materials and processes are often intended to create prototypes, which have intentionally short lifespans. For example, one of Van Herpen's dresses that the CI acquired had such issues with brittleness that it broke with even the most careful handling. This proprietary material called Tusk XC2700T is described by the company as having similar specifications for ABS and PBT, but the formulation is not disclosed. Analysis at the Met by scientist Adriana Rizzo, using FTIR spectroscopy and PYGCMS techniques, suggests a hybrid epoxy acrylate polymer for the transparent bulk of the dress, which is consistent with UV curable polymers used for stereolithography, which is the technique that this dress is made with. The orange coating is formulated with polystyrene, acrylonitrile and urethane acrylate. Rizzo also found through evolved gas analysis the loss of sulfur-containing components, alerting us that we must take care and storage of where we place this. Additionally, we know the dress was built horizontally, which some research has shown to produce objects with lower tensile strength compared to vertically built objects. So in looking at this dress, we must think, is this even wearable? Another challenging dress I was charged with caring for came from the design trio 3S4. This dress was so fragile that it would break with any manipulation, and our agreement with the lender included a level of acceptable loss. As we knew breaks would occur, no matter how careful we were in dressing it for exhibition. Even Bradley Rothenberg, the architect who worked with 3S4 to create the dress, admitted in an interview that, quote, the model that was wearing it hated us, end quote, since the dress would shatter if she wasn't careful. Wearability is the key to the success of 3D printed fashion, and thus far it has largely eluded designers. It doesn't take great imagination to realize that while these works by Van Herpen and 3S4 are exciting and spectacular, they preclude the ability of someone to sit or bend. Even when using flexible polymers, 3D printed textiles are thicker, flex less, are not breathable, and in general cannot function to clothe a moving body as well as cloth can. 3S4 has lamented that no matter how the internal geometry of the 3D printed textile was altered to increase stretch potential, quote, the practicality at the end comes and kicks your ass, end quote. Grappling with this fundamental flaw of 3D printed fashion, designers have developed two approaches to try to circumvent the static limitations of the technique. First, they try to make the material more like cloth, that is they try to make a material that flexes and even stretches. The primary method they use to do this is by designing a series of interlocking links or chains that function much like chainmail does, thus breaking up the rigid material through injecting space, air, and controlled movement into a structure. This kind of fabric has several fashion precedents, including most notably Paco Rabant, who created iconic futuristic looks of the 1960s that often mimicked chainmail in some way. This interlocking link approach was used in 2000 by Yannick Katanen to create what is now considered the first ever functional 3D printed dress. As you see here, the dress does have a somewhat fluid drape, but it still requires a fabric undergarment and careful handling to wear it. The use of interlocking rings or links echoes the first textile structures ever invented, which collectively are called non-wovens. These consist of structures using looping and knotting, like knitting, crochet, spraying, macrame, and other techniques, and they tend to have more stretch than woven fabrics. Thus, it does make sense that engineers and designers should turn to these non-wovens in their quest for give for 3D printed materials. The second method that designers use to make 3D printed objects more textile-like is to revert to traditional methods of dressmaking and tailoring. In this instance, the designers break the 3D print into smaller sections, like a traditional flat pattern, and then hand-stitch the sections back together to form the garment. Oftentimes, the 3D printed piece is layered on top of a fabric lining, which is then stitched together. This method essentially creates a traditional fabric undergarment with applied 3D printed pieces on top. This traditional method is how 3S4 creates the more spectacular 3D printed garments. While their 3D printed components feature proprietary thermoplastic polyurethane and stunning colors and forms, their actual construction techniques, stitching thread, and lining fabrics are totally typical. Although they have solved some issues of flexibility through using Elastomeric TPU, their designs are unable to be mass-produced and have resulted in garments that are still not comfortable to wear in daily life because of issues with vapor transmission and inflexibility. For conservators, their construction techniques are cautionary. To me, the lamination of novel materials with more traditional ones evokes Anglo-American designer Charles James' approach to his sculptural gowns. He created his designs using newly developed materials in the 1940s and 50s like Pellon and nylon mesh window screening that were then overlaid with couture materials like silk satin, phile, or velvet. He was unable to find fabrics that would provide him the architectural effects he needed to realize his designs, and so he forced these laminated materials to yield to his artistic will through the actual act of lamination. Unfortunately, the tension between novel and more traditional materials in his garments have spelled disaster, as his gowns now show major inherent vice caused by different aging properties of the laminated fabrics. You see examples here. Conservators should anticipate a similar tension occurring as in 3S4s and other designer 3D printed garments that are made through stitching laminated 3D printed and fabric pieces together. Charles James' work has one additional resonance with the potentialities of 3D printed fashion. He conceived of his works in the round as actual 3D sculptures, with the human body not having a front or back, but rather completely in the round. He obsessively created 3D forms to test his ideas and create his unique patterns. Even Iris Van Herpen, who we all acknowledge is cutting edge, still traditionally conceives of her 3D printed garments as front and back planes, not intrinsically in the round. Her 3D printed dresses are two pieces of front and back that slot together at the side. So this adherence to the notion of side scenes does not speak to the potential of designing in the digitalized third dimension. The ability to scan, design, and test fit in the digital realm is perhaps 3D printed fashion's greatest promise. It offers a paradigmatic shift in the way fashion is designed and manufactured. This diagram by Philip Delamore, an early advocate of 3D printed fashion, shows how the manufacturing processes could be streamlined. Currently, the steps to create a fashionable garment involve several back and forth transitions from 2D to 3D to 2D and back again. 3D printed fashion has the potential to do away with these multi-step processes, as its utopic promise is that the garment is created and sized in software and then printed, bypassing the need to resort to multiple conversions between dimensions. Importantly, the fit models or customers are 3D scanned, so any test fitting is done virtually. And yet, this is simply not happening because 3D printing processes are still too complicated and time-consuming. For example, a Van Herpen dress has taken 45 hours to print, followed by nearly 8 hours of polishing and post-finishing processes. And that doesn't even include her initial ideation and work with programmers and engineers to create the design. Here's an example of just some of the finishing process for skeleton. It's doable for one-off statement pieces that function as de facto wearable sculpture, but not for ready-made fashion. Philip Delamore imagined at the beginning of the 2000s that by 2020, a fashion designer would simply design a garment and software in the customer's scanned body, fabricate it in a materializer, and voila, we have 3D printed fashion. But this hasn't yet happened, and I'm not so sure it will for the foreseeable future. Fashion and textiles have always been a signifier of a culture's technological state, and cloth is one of humankind's oldest and best proven technologies. Unfortunately, the material and manufacturing limitations of 3D printing are still too palpable. The technology that can make 3D printed fashion to clothe the moving, sweating, dirty human body is still out of our reach. Thank you.