disposable clothing :: a response to ready-to-wear fashions: clothing that can be constructed with such ease, speed, frugality, and frivolty that it becomes dispensible. the cost of storing and caring for the clothes might exceed the cost of creating new ones on the fly.
scribble during the month of january 2002, i was toying with ideas about dress-making versus modern day ready to wear. meanwhile, i ordered printable cotton matte from hewlett packard to run through our large format injet printer. i imagined being able to print new clothes for myself each morning before school or work, and what a contrast in mentality this would be compared to the tailors and dress-makers of the earlier years this century.
in response i decided to write a program that would let me generate designs and styles for new skirts on the fly, write them to a postscript file, and send them off to the printer. in a matter of one minute, nearly 15 different designs can be generated and qued up for printing.
it is interesting and mildy humorous to believe that soon we'd be able to print up new clothes for ourselves each morning and toss them into the trash or recycle them in the evenings. the design process is taken away from the designer and placed into the hands of the wearer (not necessarily a good thing, but something to think about nonetheless). this is both a scary and exciting thought. people dress in particular styles that make them feel most comfortable and confident. leaving them with complete control over their clothing design wouldn't force them to think differently about fashion or project themselves into other styles of dress.
