Until recently, custom tailoring – clothes made to a customer’s individual specifications – was the only way to get clothes that fit perfectly. For most people, custom tailoring is expensive. But the invention of active fibers and innovative knitting processes is changing the textile industry.
“We all wear clothes and shoes,” says Sasha Mikkinally ’23, a third-year architecture student and recent MIT School of Architecture graduate. “It’s a human need, but we also have a human need to express ourselves. I like the idea of customizing clothing in a sustainable way. This dress will be more sustainable than traditional fashion, both for the consumer and the producer.”
McInally, a textile designer and researcher at the Self-Assembly Lab, collaborated with Ministry of Supply, a fashion company specializing in high-tech apparel, to design the 4D knitted dress. The dress combines multiple technologies for personalized fit and style. Heat-activated yarns, computational knitting, and robotic activation around each garment create a sculpted fit. The Ministry of Supply team led decisions on the stable yarns, colors, original size, and overall design.
“Everybody’s body is different,” says Skylar Tibbits, an associate professor in the School of Architecture and founder of the Self-Assembly Lab, “so even if you’re wearing the same size clothes as someone else, it’s not really the same.”
Active Textiles
Students in the Self-Assembly Lab have been working on dynamic textiles for the past few years. They create yarns that can change shape, change properties, insulate or become breathable. So far, they’ve been used to tailor clothing such as sweaters and face masks. Tibbits says the 4D knit dress is the culmination of what the students have learned working on active textiles.
McKinlay collaborated on the production of the active yarns, creating the concept design, developing the knitting method, and programming the lab’s industrial knitting machines. Once the garment design was programmed into the knitting machine, multiple dresses could be rapidly produced. Depending on where the active yarns were placed in the design, the dresses could be in a variety of styles, including pintucks, pleats, an empire waist, or a cinched waist.
“Styling is important,” says McInally. “Most people focus on size, but I think styling is what makes an outfit stand out. We’re evolving as people, and I think style is evolving as well. Next to fit, people look at their presentation.”
Danny Griffin is currently a graduate student in architectural design, but has no experience in clothing construction or the fashion industry. Tibbits asked Griffin, who has experience with robotics projects in construction, to join the team. Griffin translated the heat activation process into a programmable robotic procedure that precisely controls its application.
“The application of heat shortens the fibres and causes them to bunch up in certain areas, effectively tightening the shape as if the garment were being tailored,” Griffin says. “It took a lot of trial and error to get the robot and heat guns right; we need to apply heat in precise locations to activate the fibres of each garment. Another challenge was setting the temperature and timing of when to apply the heat.”
It took a while to determine how the robot could reach all parts of the dress.
“Commercially available heat guns, which are like handheld hair dryers, are too big to use,” Griffin says. “We needed a more compact design. Once we figured that out, it was a lot of fun writing the script for the robot to follow.”
A dress may start out with one design, say pintucks on the bust, and then after months of wear it can be reheated to change its appearance.The dress can then be further tailored by applying heat.
Beyond fit and fashion
Producing clothes efficiently is a “huge challenge” in the fashion industry, according to Gihan Amarasiriwardena (Class of 2011), co-founder and president of Ministry of Supply.
“Seasonal trends are often guesswork,” he says. “Sometimes trends don’t pan out, or certain sizes don’t sell out, so they end up heavily discounted or end up in landfill.”
“Fast fashion” is a term used to describe clothes that are cheap, trendy, and easily disposable by consumers – quickly designed and produced to suit current trends. According to Tibbits, the 4D knit dress is the polar opposite of fast fashion. Unlike the fashion industry’s traditional “cut and sew” process, the 4D knit dress is made entirely in one piece, resulting in virtually no waste.
“Globally, dresses are custom made to customer measurements, so there isn’t a lot of excess inventory,” Tibbits says.
McInally said he hopes the use of the new technology will reduce the amount of stock retailers typically discard at the end of each season.
“Dresses can be tailored to fit changing styles and tastes,” she says, “and they may be able to absorb some of the size variation that retailers need to stock. Instead of extra small, small, medium, large and extra large, retailers could have one dress for small sizes and one dress for large sizes. Of course, these are the same sustainability points that benefit consumers.”
Self-Assembly Lab has been working with Ministry of Supply on active textile projects for several years, and late last year the team debuted a 4D knitted dress at the company’s flagship store in Boston, where a robotic arm moved around the dress as customers watched. For Amarasiriwardena, this was an opportunity to gauge interest and get feedback from customers who wanted to try on the dress.
“If there’s a demand, this is something that can be made quickly,” Amarasiriwardena says, unlike the typical design and manufacturing process, which can take years.
Griffin and McInally attended the demonstration and were pleased with the results, and Griffin believes that overcoming the “technical barriers” opens up a lot of possibilities for the project.
“This experience made me want to try more,” he says.
McKinlay also wants to tackle more styles.
“I hope that this research project will help people reassess and reevaluate their relationship with clothing,” McInally says. “Right now, when people buy clothes, there’s only one ‘look’ for that piece of clothing. But how exciting would it be to buy one piece of clothing and then be able to rework it so that it changes and evolves with you, the seasons, and your style? I hope that’s a lesson people take away.”
