4 ms·
"What am I missing?" Well, mostly I would criticize that much of the analysis is based around the cost of making clothing. But buying basic clothing (t-shirts,
by antimagic 13y ago
"What am I missing?"
Well, mostly I would criticize that much of the analysis is based around the cost of making clothing. But buying basic clothing (t-shirts, simple pants etc) is cheap, even from a developing country perspective these days.
In the developed world, we pay for brand, for design, to be fashionable. The price we pay for a garment has only a slight relation to the cost of making the garment. As such, the economics of printable clothing is not going to make a major difference.
In fact it's worse than that. Fashion is often used as a signifier of wealth. If the world discovers that it's expensive to make hand-sewn clothing, and cheap to print it, you can bet your bottom dollar that the wealthy people of the world will only wear hand-sewn garments. These are the people that set fashion, which means that every 20-something fashionista will be looking to copy them, which means that they too are going to have hand-sewn garments. It's the future equivalent of the fact that today's rich and famous don't show up to the Oscars in a jean and t-shirt (well, unless they're trying to make some kind of ironic statement, and even then you can bet that it'll be a designer pair of jeans and t-shirt, costing in the hundreds of dollars)
I'm not hugely fashion-conscious, but I have friends that sit in a bar and tell me whether or not the girl two seats up has a real Versace handbag, or a cheap knock-off (it's scary - enough to make me never buy a knock-off!). If you know what you're looking for, you can see the difference, and people that care about fashion do know what they're looking for.
- bsenftner 13y agoAh, but what if some highly influential celebrities/1%'ers have equity in the 3D printed clothing? What if these influencers had their own 3D printed clothing lines, and they pushed the idea? When there is money to be made...
- james3 13y agoThats a huge 'what if'. And it's also assuming that there is money to be made with 3D printed clothing in the fashion industry.
- jlees 13y agoWell, the wealthiest - the Oscar red carpets of the world - do wear hand-sewn, one-off custom-designed couture. That opens up a whole marketplace of cheaper knockoffs "inspired by" it, as well as the original designer's ready-to-wear line. As an overlap between the two worlds, tailoring to make an off-the-rack garment fir properly is also something that a certain wealth level take for granted - when I was recently shopping for clothes in Nordstrom, it was assumed I was going to get them tailored for the perfect fit.
- chongli 13y agoBut buying basic clothing (t-shirts, simple pants etc) is cheap, even from a developing country perspective these days. Clothing is cheap but it's often manufactured in highly unethical working conditions. Factories burn down or collapse, killing hundreds of workers and maiming many more. It's a really terrible situation and I'm sure many companies would love to have an affordable means of automating this problem away.
- alex_c 13y agoI'm always fascinated by suggestions that one solution to unethical working conditions is to eliminate the jobs entirely.
- chongli 13y agoEvery job is slated for automation eventually. The idea that jobs are a good thing to have around is widespread but wrong, in my opinion. Jobs are a relic of the pre-automation era of civilization.
- Zoomla 13y agobut you can get a customized 3d printed piece really quickly.