Chinese Print Dress

3D printing has become a perfect tool for fashion designers. At the 2016 edition of the Wuhan Textile University Fashion Week, student Tang Xiao showcased three gorgeous 3D printed dresses, all featuring white bone-like structures inspired by the Sirens of Greek mythology.

The 2016 edition of the Wuhan Textile University Fashion Week kicked off in Beijing last week, and will continue until the end of this week. Exhibiting over 100 amazing creations by graduate students spread out over nine days and 17 shows, it is the perfect occasion to find out more about what China’s up-and-coming fashion designers are working on.

But few designers stood out more than Tang Xiao thanks to her amazing blend of fashion and top level technology. While we’ve seen 3D printed dresses before, the 23-year-old Tang Xiao went out of her way to mimic bone structures as closely as possible for her three dresses. What’s more, all dresses have been 3D printed and modeled to fit the model’s body perfectly, with each section of clothing being tailored separately. Tang Xiao worked on the three 3D printed dresses for a total of four months from start to finish. In total she believes to have spent about 50, 000 RMB on the dresses, or about , 700 USD.

What’s more, all dresses were inspired by the mysterious Sirens from Greek mythology – the enchanting, gorgeous and deadly sea creatures who lured sailors to their deaths with their mesmerizing music. As the designer explained, that definition of a Siren sometimes gets in the way of seeing those creatures objectively. “For a lot of people, a Siren is simply beautiful, deadly and poisonous. But I actually wanted to emphasize it as just a creature, a very pure and simple creature. These judgements mirror modern society, where a lot of people only look at the surface of others, ” she explains.

This is also reflected in the chosen color scheme – or lack thereof. “Today, we always wear ‘colored glasses’ used to judge others, so I decided to use white as an overall color. This expresses their inner purity, ” she says. “As to the shape of the dresses, I exaggerated them a bit to reflect the qualities of 3D printing. A 3D printer can make almost anything, it constructs objects and forms that are impossible for other technologies to copy.”