Verlan Dress from New Skins with Francis Bitonti Studio

Remember when you first heard about 3D printing and someone said, "one day they'll even be able to 3D print clothing!" Well, here we go.

Francis Bitonti, a multidisciplinary designer from New York City, organized a three-week workshop at Pratt that resulted in the creation of a 3D-printed dress.

Bionti's designers built this dress with two MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printers and two different filaments: MakerBot PLA Filament, and MakerBot Flexible Filament, which is coming soon.

MakerBot Flexible Filament is a polyester-based filament that is more flexible than PLA. It's ideal for constructing the parts of the dress that need to stretch and contract, adapting to the body's movement.

The dress was made of 59 3D-printed pieces: 20 from PLA (for the harder, more skeleton-like sections), and 39 from MakerBot Flexible Filament (for the more dynamic, muscle-like parts). The pieces were glued together with Loctite Two Part Professional Heavy Duty 5 Minute Epoxy. The images show how they all fit together.

All the parts of the dress took 400 hours to print and 24 hours to assemble. The MakerBot Flexible Filament was tied up the sides with leather straps, and the top was snapped into place with a plastic button.

The current dimensions are for a 5'10" woman in a size 4, but you can tailor the dress to your own dimensions using the Blender file. We can't wait to spot you wearing yours.

Interested in MakerBot Flexible Filament? Read more here.