Become Your Own Fashion Designer, Printing Makes it Possible

The creative branch and printing industry have long lived a vivid relationship, with the fashion industry being an important partner. A new level might now be reached, considering the following big news for all fashion creatives: London opened up a 24-hours textile-printing studio! Whether you are a designer, start-up, big player, or would just would love to wear your self-designed shirt, this studio fulfils your fashion-dreams.

Printing Artwork for Everyone

Design ME is the name of the place where you can have your own designs digitally printed onto a variety of natural and synthetic fabrics. Located in the creative district of Peckham, the studio has already attracted many people – including menswear designers Alex Mullins and Liam Hodges – all connected by their love for self-designed fashion.

A look at the concept of the studio reveals the customer-friendliness owner Michelle Smith, a design graduate, aimed for: Not sure if fabrics and colors meet your expectations? Just order a swatch pack or have the studio make samples of your prints. Then, if the results are as you imagined, you can simply email your artwork, in at least 300 dpi and RGB as a TIFF file at the actual print size.

The sewing is left in your hands, but even if you are no pro in this area yet, is not the prospect of wearing your unique printing the perfect motivator to start learning?

Printing is Enabling

Certainly, Design ME constitutes a milestone in the accessibility of digital textile-printing and textile-printing in general. The big industry giants like Epson and Fujifilm have already successfully reached this level on a bigger scale. As designer Renata Figueiredo puts it:

We have an idea at a time, and the next day we can do it.

She was part of Epson’s Digital Couture Project at New York Fashion Week 2016 where selected designers showcased their printed fashion.

This year the project’s success story continued. Epson had two printers installed at their fashion show to display the method and technique behind the special haute couture: One prints onto specialty paper as a carrier for the print which then can be transferred onto any synthetic fabric, the other directly prints onto non-polyester-based material.

For the fashion industry printing also allows entering new dimensions of creativity, as in the case of Fujifilm and Japanese fashion designer Yuima Nakazato. He wanted to contribute holographic dresses to the Paris Haute Couture Collection. The challenge: Printing in a broad color spectrum, because until then only four different types of colors could be created using holographic fabric. Through experimenting, Fujifilm developed a method of printing graphics onto a composite transparent backing material using their high-elongation UVijet KV ink. This way Nakazato was able to deliver his very successful submission to the show.

Printing is opening up to the creative more and more. Where have you experienced this alliance? Leave us your comment next to this blog article.