S2G

Introduction

The European fashion industry is highly atomised. The global face-to-the-customer brands are working with complex value chains covering multiple partners and multi-tiered subcontracting (trend bureau, style bureau, buying agent, garment maker, fabric supplier, quality control, logistic partners, etc). The same happens for smaller players at a national or local level. While time to sampling is a key decision factor in this fast-moving industry, the high number of partners and stakeholders involved in the in buying decisions increases the time, as well as, the environmental and economic costs of prototyping. The big players are solving the issue by streamlining buying processes and using IT. For SMEs, particularly for the new labels, the sampling process faces the same problems and normally encounter high barriers in terms of cost, speed and feasibility.

The STYLE 2 GARMENT project creates a platform for European fashion SMEs that reduces the cost and environment impact of sampling, and increases the speed of fashion prototyping, through a solution for 3D garment visualisation. It links a sophisticated library of garment cut patterns to textile surface designs: A 3D visualisation tool produces realistic, pattern-based visual representations of a finished garment at the sample stage, without the need to produce any prototype. In production, the dataset generated in the visualisation phase facilitates the industrial processes.

STYLE 2 GARMENT proposes a useful innovation process by harnessing ubiquitous open source web programming to commercially available 3D visualisation tools, transforming the capital investment of a virtual prototyping process into a readily available service.

STYLE 2 GARMENT offers a convincing array of benefits, besides being a sustainable and cost-efficient tool to ease the sampling process for young SME labels: Access to the garment and print libraries enhance creation; the platform connects to new customers or production partners and the standardised formats and datasets facilitate industrial standards in garment production.

The STYLE 2 GARMENT platform brings the technological prowess, usually reserved for big brands, to European fashion SMEs.

Objectives

To create a platform for European fashion SMEs that reduces the economic and environmental cost of sampling and increases the speed of fashion prototyping through a solution of 3D garment visualisations linked to production-ready garment pattern data. The platform will be partnered with garment makers from southern Europe and textile print micro-factories.

Outcome of ELIIT project support

Impact (to date): The ELIIT project provided access, shared expertise and knowledge required for scaling up concepts of digital garment making.

To date, the most valuable outcome from our participation in the ELIIT project was the support to improve the last prototype to a state, in which we can run the project outcome within our operations, while increasing process efficiency.

Partners

SME: Mitwill Textiles SA

Country: France
Year of creation: 2013
Background: Mitwill Textiles Europe is a start-up textile design company that applies innovative processes to textile converting. It has developed a proprietary print design platform for collection management and operates a state-of-the-art digital textile printing micro-factory with sublimation, reactive and pigment printing capabilities.
More information: company website, Instagram

Technical provider: University Albstadt-Sigmaringen

Country: Germany
Year of creation: 1971
Background: The University of Albstadt-Sigmaringen is the leading German academic centre for garment technology engineers & managers.
More information: company website, Instagram