After launching a Kickstarter campaign last year, fashion designer Laura Thapthimkuna has finally completed her 3D printed Vortex Dress.

In the fashion industry, the emergence of 3D printing has transformed the nature of how clothing and accessories are designed and created. Not only has the technology allowed fashion designers to produce clothing with specified dimensions, it has also enabled them to create garments with complex and otherworldly designs.

Back in September 2015, US-based fashion designer and design engineer Laura Thapthimkuna launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund her space-inspired 3D printed Vortex Dress. The ambitious project was Thapthimkuna’s first attempt at creating a garment entirely with 3D printing technology. The fashion designer ultimately decided that it was the best production method to successfully tackle the project due to the sheer size and supernatural design of the dress.

The idea for the Vortex Dress stemmed from Thapthimkuna’s use of biomorphic funnel-like shapes. The complex design process for the garment took the fashion designer over a year to complete. After the 2D sketches of the dress were complete, the fashion designer had them transformed into printable files through 3D modeling software like ZBrush and Maya.

i.materialise Helps Bring the Vortex Dress Down to Earth

In need of 3D printing service bureau capable of handling such an intricate and large-scale project, Thapthimkuna turned to the Belgium-based company i.materialise to help bring her space-inspired Vortex Dress to life. She decided to have the garment printed in I.materialise’s Paintable Resin material, which provided her gigantic print with a smooth surface that could be easily colored and post-processed.

After the 3D printing process was complete, the Vortex Dress was painted with a black clear coat. Aside from the advanced alien-like structure of the 3D printed dress, the most impressive part of the project is its massive size, measuring over 36 inches in height and up to 25.4 inches wide.

Needless to say, this complex 3D printed Vortex Dress would have been extremely difficult — perhaps impossible — to accomplish with traditional production techniques. But still, it wasn’t easy for the fashion designer to let go and let the 3D printer handle the work for her. According to Thapthimkuna, this was one of the more difficult aspects of creating the Vortex Dress via 3D printing technology

“Learning to let go of the notion that I have to do everything myself was challenging for me initially. As an artist I’ve always done everything myself from start to finish, with 3D printing I need to work with others and let them interpret my vision to an extent, which turned out to be very rewarding in the end,” she said.