CUSTOMER STORY

Fashion Forward: Co-creating the First 3D Printed Luxury Glasses

2 min read

red Dávid Ring's 3D-printed luxury glasses

Fashion can be provocative, inspiring, political and revolutionary – but it is never boring. We experienced this first-hand when we attended the fashion show of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp last week. Antwerp has long been the fashion capital of Belgium, and young designers from all over the world study at the renowned Fashion Department of the university; at the end of the year they get to present everything they’ve learnt on a real catwalk, with the Master’s students presenting an entire collection.

Dávid Ring at the drawing table
Dávid Ring at the drawing table

We first encountered Dávid Ring when he approached our consumer 3D printing service, i.materialise, for help with his end-of-year project. We are always on the lookout for inspiring young designers, and we thought Dávid showed great potential! The project developed into a co-creation between Dávid, and our concept designer Nils Faber, who worked together to design five ingenious 3D-printed sunglasses. Dávid used his fashion know-how to provide us with an initial design, as well as paper cut-outs, sketches, and fabric samples detailing the exact colors he needed. Then we translated the design into 3D, and printed it out using two different techniques: for the lenses we used Stereolithography, and the frames were Laser Sintered.

A woman wearing yellow Dávid Ring's 3D-printed luxury glasses
A woman wearing red Dávid Ring's 3D-printed luxury glasses
A woman wearing blue Dávid Ring's 3D-printed luxury glasses

Image credits (except where specified otherwise) — Photography: Robert Weinraub; Model: Simona Mikulova; Makeup: Cecile Paravina; Wig: Justyna Jozefowicz

The sunglasses are fully 3D-printed, produced as a total concept and foregoing the need for hinges or assembly. Each pair came in a different monochrome color finish, providing the perfect finishing touch for Dávid’s stunning designs.

Dávid Ring holds 3D printed glasses in his left hand and draws on sketchpad with his right hand

The designs also translated well to the catwalk – it takes talent to stand out in a fashion show so replete with passionate, innovative creations. The show started off with the first-year students, divided into three themes entitled “Natural Spirit”, with a focus on skirts, “Put Your Head on my Shoulder”, which was about dresses, and “Carpet Fantasy” – the experimental section. The second-year students opened with the theme of historical costumes; we saw everything from milkmaids, foppish gentlemen and Victorian ladies to aviators! The third-year bachelors – among which Dávid Ring – were introduced by the theme of ethnical costumes.

From Dávid’s eclectic, brightly colored dresses to walking coat racks and distorted heads, it was an impressive mix of political statement and creative power. Finally, the whole second part of the show was dedicated to the six master students, a continuation of the original “Antwerp Six” who took the fashion world by storm in the eighties. We hope the fashion department students of 2016 go on to create great things!


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