You Can Now Buy 3-D Printed Blazers

The robots aren’t coming, they’re already here. Menswear startup, Ministry of Supply, is now making fully customized blazers, entirely on site and in about 90 minutes, using 3-D knitting machines.

Profiled in a recent Washington Post story, the company uses a 10-foot-long 3-D knitting machine — one “that weighs as much as a car [and] is outfitted with 4,000 needles” — to make single-piece (i.e. seamless) blazers at the cash register, literally doing the job of an entire supply chain’s worth of people in a space no larger than a tanning bed.

Betting big on both the technology and the notion that customers “are increasingly spending money on what they believe are unique experiences,” the founders of Ministry of Supply are taking the concepts of transparent manufacturing and customized fit to an unprecedented level.

The story touches on the unique process — they design the clothes digitally using 3-D mannequins and, save for the button and tag application and a wash, the entire process is completed by the machine — and potential industry ramifications, both good and bad.

For instance, the custom knitting process drastically minimizes waste, “especially compared with traditional knit manufacturing, in which it’s not uncommon for 30 percent of the textile to be wasted,” and that’s good. And, currently, the customized blazers only cost $345, which is also good.

But, as the article notes, “if this and other nascent efforts are successful, they could set off a scramble in the fashion business to radically transform the long-standing supply chains and design methods that are used to make clothes today.” And that might not be so good, because millions of people all across the globe count on those “long-standing supply chains” for employment.

You can read more about it at The Washington Post.

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