Just want to share a video that tells you everything you need to know about the Open Garments research project, where we are working on.

I recently posted an item concerning the use of coffee beans as an ingredient for a new fabric. Guess what; you can combine your coffee fabric with a cloud of milky clothes.

According the Wall Street  Journal Online:

“Per Aage Sivertsen, winner of this spring’s Oslo Fashion Week designer award (Naløyet) in February and creative mind behind the Norwegian “eco-lux” brand FIN, plans to make part of next year’s spring/summer collection from a gauze-like fabric based 100% on milk proteins. Making fabric from milk frees up land that would otherwise have been used to grow cotton, a crop vilified for its intense water consumption and high pesticide use.”

Source: PSFK , Wall Street Journal Online

I’ve you are planning a visit to Antwerp in the coming months, don’t forget to visit the Paper Fasion exhibition at the Fashion Museum.

The exhibition focuses – as the title already indicates – on the use of paper in modern and contemporary fashion. More information can be found here.

According to Charles Leadbeater, the 21st century is the age of mass innovation as was the 20th century the age of mass production. In his book We-Think, he talks about the world wide web as a platform for mass creativity and innovation, since it allows people to share, collaborate and sometimes even create together. The main ideas of the book are also explained in this beautifully illustrated and animated video.

Some months ago one of my colleagues pointed me to a talk by the American psychologist Barry Schwartz. In his presentation “The Paradox of Choice” he focusses on one of the central elements of our Western Society, the freedom of choice. Common belief starts from the idea that we need a lot of choice to feel free. Schwartz argues that too much freedom will eventually make us “more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied”.

I’d like to link the concept of “too much choice” to an element my colleague Katrien stumbled upon. She found research which indicated that in the process of mass customization the concept of  mass confusion is likely to pop up. Mass confusion can be seen as the burden of all the effort, complexity and risk a customization process provokes.

In an article titled “Overcoming Mass Confusion: Collaborative Customer Co-Design in Online Communities “ a way to overcome mass confusion is co-designing: collaboratively working on a design would make it easier to overcome the stress of mass confusion.

In customisation process finding the right balance between (collective) guidance & individual freedom should thus be one of the key questions.

A while back, we talked about two website – Spoonflower and Bonbonkakku – which make it possible to design your own fabric. And since you have to try (almost) everything in life, we decided to check out the working of Spoonflower.

The first question was of course: which design? After some brainstorming we decided to make our business cards (which we still don’t have) out of fabric! Not only because we’re both part of an research project concerning clothes, but the choice for fabric is also related to the name of this blog: Social Textiles!

A second question concerned the amount of fabric we would order. But since this first time is just an experiment: we’ve chosen for a swatch (8×8 inch or 20,3 x 20,3 cm). If it all goes well, we can always order a whole yard for each business card!

With some essential help of Maarten, the designer, the business cards were ready for print! And from there on, I took over and frankly, it was a piece of cake! After registering, I just had to upload the TIF-file that Maarten already made! The next step was choosing the lay-out of the design: center, repeat, half-step, half-brick or mirror. I went for the option repeat and indicated that I wanted to order a swatch. So, these options are on the right side of your computer window and on the left side, you see your design with an indication of the size (kind of a ruler).

So far so good, but when I looked at the design the colours in the Spoonflower menu were different than the ones in the original TIF-file. However my attention was drawn to a title called  “preview color shift” in the left corner. This was a short, but clear text explaining that:

If you observe colors shifting in the preview: don’t worry. We print from your original file, not the preview.

So what’s up?: TIFF files and LAB colors won’t display in browsers, so to create this preview the Spoonflower elves have translated your original into a PNG file with RGB colors. Despite their care, color shift can occur.

This preview is created to give you a sense of the size and placement of your design in repeat.
When the elves prepare your file to print, they use a very fancy digital textile workstation that operates directly from your original file.
Most folks are really happy with the result, but if for any reason you aren’t, just let us know and we’ll reprint or refund your order.
Please keep in mind that colors on a computer monitor are not the same as colors printed on fabric, so if you’re sensitive about getting just the right color you’ll want to order a swatch first.
Unfortunately textile design and the web haven’t spent a lot of time together. As a matter of fact, we’ve only recently introduced them, but we hope the marriage will be long and fruitful! We’re working very hard to improve the accuracy of this preview. Apologies for any flaws.

So, I was reassured and went on with my order. I can say that I’m very anxious about the result. And as soon as that little piece of fabric arrives, I’ll let you know!