This week, the who’s who of the denim industry met in Milan for the annual Denim Première Vision, where market trends and innovations in the sector were on show. Among those participating in the event was designer Danit Peleg, known for her work in 3D printed fashion and textiles, who was showcasing an in-development technique for repurposing denim scraps.
The technique in question, which Peleg describes as an experiment, consists of breaking down denim waste into small fibers and then combining it with recycled TPU to create 3D printable pellets. This composite material is then fed into a large-format Ginger Additive and then melted and extruded. According to Peleg, it took only 30 minutes to print a piece of the TPU-denim fabric measuring 70 x 70 cm.
Of course, the designer and her team, which also included engineer Victor Gagneux, went through some trial and error before the aforementioned print, testing out various structures, denim percentages, and print settings. Still, the project is in its early days and development will continue for the recycled material, which uses denim waste sourced from Italian denim factory PureDenim.
Peleg shared this project on LinkedIn recently and has garnered a fair share of buzz and criticism, with many pointing out that combining a natural cotton fiber with plastic—even if both are recycled—will make the resulting hybrid material difficult to recycle. When a commenter asked “WHO can Recycle the Mix of Cotton and TPU?” Peleg replied that she believes they can. Many others, however, are excited about the project and the potential to print complex garments or textile structures with the hybrid material.
This is not the first time that denim and 3D printing have gone together. In 2019, New York-based fashion label KAIMIN teamed up with Stratasys to 3D print directly onto denim using the latter’s PolyJet technology. The result was a series of denim garments with three-dimensional geometric structures at the knees, hips and shoulders.
