One of the highlights of NEXT Berlin 2012 for me was the talk on fashion, and particularly the talk by Mary Huang of Continuum Fashion on 3D printed clothes – specifically bikinis and shoes. Having the opportunity to see a speaker on stage actually wearing 3D printed shoes made the whole concept so much more palpable:

Mary and her business partner Jenna Fizel are taking the next step in their idea of mass-cusomisation of fashion through launching Constrvct, which they talked about back in May, via a Kickstarter.

The idea is simple: they have a selection of clothing styles, and you can overlay your own patterns on them, and have it printed on with digital textile printing – and it’s all done through a web interface. The finished garments are made from organic cotton jersey. Backers of the project get anything from priority access for a $1 pledge, up to a custom dress plus a bunch of rewards for $340.

I love the idea of giving people access to what is, essentially, a clothes-making beta. As they say in their Kickstarter pitch:

Also, you get all of the project updates–so you get to see design iterations, mumblings about code, and lots of features being built and changed every day. We just hope you’ll be nice and understand that things are buggy and we’re working on it.

At the time of writing, the project has earned about 10% of its target with 23 days to go.