In yesterday's post, we looked at a few designers enhancing their garments with 3D printed details or incorporating them in conceptual ways. Let's continue the thread with a brief focus on 3D printed small parts and accessories.
As seen in another post, fashion-wise, Stratasys offers a range of solutions, including the J850™ TechStyle™ 3D Printer. This printer enables the direct printing of 3D designs onto textiles and garments, as demonstrated also by the material swatch book recently printed on the J850 by Mark Chesteram and shared on the company's Instagram account.
However, the versatility of the J850™ TechStyle™ printer extends beyond textile printing. It can indeed be used for 3D printing small fashion accessories (up to 50mm in height), some of which can evolve into small works of art.
One such application is the creation of colorful buttons: these buttons not only boast bright colors and durability but can also be efficiently 3D printed in a diverse range of designs, offering an innovative way to make a statement. 
For instance, with the assistance of Stratasys technology, Nadia Zinger Wagshall designed sets of buttons in vibrant shades that seem inspired by marine creatures, while Florenradica crafted marble-like brooches, bag handles, buckles, vanity boxes and buttons. 
While 3D printed buttons contribute to waste reduction since you print only the amount of buttons you need (but it's intriguing to ponder about the possibility of buying a garment and receiving a spare button and the file to 3D print additional buttons…), they can also transform into remarkable art pieces. Florenradica's assorted boxes of buttons bear for example a resemblance to the modular ring cabinets from the 1700s we discussed previously. Actually, the ring cabinet could be easily recreated as a 3D printed curiosity using this machine.
Moreover, the printer's capabilities extend to luxury packaging and in particular to multi-colored perfume bottles as proved by the Illusory Material duo, Jiani Zeng and Honghao Deng.
Inspired by natural gradients, the duo designed a bottle incorporating a series of colors, from sky blue to bright orange and vibrant purple. Using the J850 Prime 3D printer the designers attempted to give a sense of dynamism to the bottle by adding a transparent layer on a colored, doubly curved surface; when lights travel through the transparent lenses, they refract towards different directions, creating a color-shifting lenticular effect.
Elsa Peretti faced many challenges in the early 1970s when designing Halston's iconic globular bottle. The possibility of an elaborate 3D printed perfume bottle with a dynamic motif, highlights how far technology has advanced, reflecting the evolution of manufacturing.
Zeng and Deng are very much intrigued by multi-material 3D printing, but they also hope that one day they may be able to compute "sensations" – from the touch and the smell, to the feelings of any physical objects (could these applications have an impact on the lives of people with sensory impairment?).
Fashion designers interested in learning more about these 3D printing processes may want to check out Texprocess in Frankfurt, Germany, (April 23-26) the leading international trade fair for processing textile and flexible materials.
