Posted by ChadNauseam 6 hours ago
I'm also a hand knitter, and I don't really see any conflict between what they're doing and hand knitting. The grist of the yarn that you use as a hand knitter is generally much thicker than these machines commonly use. Commercial 3D knitting machines can do all of the stretchy, thin, and light stuff that the modern wardrobe is built around.
As folks note, this technology was really pioneered by Shimaseki's work in Japan just decades ago. What OC and the similar Brooklyn-based Tailored Industry are really innovating on is the business model and connection to production process. Folks like this are really serious about not producing all of the waste that comes with most fashion production processes, and it shows up at several levels of the stack.
For the HN crowd, TI's platform gives you more of a sense of why this sort of tech is really like the cloud for knitwear: https://tailoredindustry.com/platform
Really a fascinating part of the global fashion production world, and one we would all benefit from seeing grow.
One problem this shows, is that as a consumer I have no idea what the hell is quality clothing. Clearly, expensive does not always mean high quality. And I'm not buying "brand" clothing either.
Your experience is very common, I have a fake nike sweatshirt I bought more than a decade ago from a random street seller (emergency on a trip) which still outlasts current brand clothes.
Consumers' ignorance is not the problem, it used to be generally true that the more expensive item was better. Every brand has seemingly decided to burn their furniture to heat the house though, and what we experience is not as much consumer ignorance as it is a lack of names deserving trust.
tf.
That’s clearly you looking for a specific fashion or intending to pay as much as you can.
Triple Aught Design jeans are $150 to $250 and I am skeptical you have anything that is outlasting them. Others brands surely as well. Seems to me you are still stuck in the “if it costs more…” line of thinking.
I tried to be a good boy and wrote to the company asking for zipper parts to fix it and they told me to buy another jacket.
So I looked for companies that advertise repairability and found Patagonia made the most believable claims. Quite reasonable now that I'm old and rich, but I wouldn't have had the choice when young and poor.
I bought a really good-looking dark blue fedora; I received a really good-looking black fedora a size-and-a-1/2 too big. I had to fight them at the credit card level, because they offered me half off at best for a hat I can't wear.
What is inconsistent: only some of them are fraudulent fronts. I'd guess about 25-50% right now, based on my recent shopping experiences. But not all: I ordered some expensive gloves; their advertised fit was wrong; we settled on 50% off (I /can/ wear them, but it's not ideal, and their return policy clearly required me to ship back). That firm had shite measurement guides, but honest merchant fronting.
I've ordered super-cool button-front shirts that ended up being tissue-like fabric. Grrr...
Speaking of fabric... Amazon folded Fabric.com into their Borg cube, and you CANNOT buy fabric by weight online - for some goddamn reason. I want to buy 100% white cotton for a play costume, and need it thicker - between sheeting and terrycloth; closer to the latter; Nothing else really matters to me about it. But can I determine the cloth thickness/weight? Nope.
So: 50% swindlers; 75% idiots; buy clothes in person or else expect to throw a certain amount away.
Ah, very relatable…
>buy clothes in person or else expect to throw a certain amount away.
That’s reasonable.
My niece runs a business that relies on the way we discard clothes. She buys clothes from suppliers in India who source them from the bales of discarded clothes sent to them from Europe. Her suppliers have in effect sorted through the mountain of discards to find the ones that have sufficient value to sell back to us. She specifically buys clothes that have 'vintage' appeal (think tailored jackets rather than hoodies) and sells them primarily to students in a northern English city. Her business has done well enough to move from market stalls to a dedicated high street store and she is just branching out into 'vintage' kids clothes.
However, made on demand will likely cost more, plus you can't fit items first. Unless they make items for fitting which you can then order to have manufactured.
But yeah the main thing is that on-demand can never compete with mass production even if a big part of the mass produced stuff is discarded.
This is definitely not universally true. E.g. photos are very cheaply printed on demand. Even on-demand books are printed at reasonable prices. Sure, mass production is cheaper (both for books and pictures), but the value difference of the individual product is high enough to bridge the price gap.
For cloth this area has found little exploration. TFA covers production at niche scale. If you would mass produce the looms to reduce the capital expense and heavily lean into customer value, e.g. individual fittings via 3d scans, as my sister comment proposes, or even just letting me customize my sweater with motive, color choice, garment etc., this could radically change the cost to value ratio. The company that has published TFA sells extremely bland apparel in a shop that looks just like any mass produced clothing shop and leaves all of the customer value of custom production on the table.
Last but not least: This "3d knitting" seems to need only a fraction of the labor of traditional sewed clothes. If textile production didn't default to underpaid labor under precarious working conditions in low income countries, it would probably already be cheaper.
"just don't do X" has basically never worked, it is not a serious solution to any problem.
And can you use finer yarn as well, like lace? The reason a sweater is knit like it is, is because of the tradeoff between knitting time and material needed. But if labor becomes free, you should be able to knit much bigger yet more delicate stuff.
Edit: ah, deknitting is called frogging
A while back, Lee Valley did a 3D knitted chisel roll using Kevlar and other materials, in support of the Canadian company which invented the 3D knitting process used (unfortunately, at the time, I didn't have the money or need for --- I've since updated my woodworking toolkit and have a nice set of chisels which it would have been perfect for, except it was discontinued and is no longer available...)
Edit: totally sincere question, I don't know their process
It’s only missing em dashes. At least someone cleaned those out.
So you would wake up, wash then stand on some platform and have your daily outfit knitted on you. Not sure how he worked around the risk of strangling though lol.
Still funny. Thanks making it reality!