Clothing in a Can! Fabrican Spray-On Fabric to Debut at London Fashion Showby Beth Cooney Fitzpatrick
Please, don't show this to the "Jersey Shore" girls.
Researchers at Imperial College London and a company called Fabrican are perfecting an aerosol fabric that can be spritzed onto the body to create T-shirts, dresses, and even pants for those who can never get them tight enough.
Hear that, JWoWW?
The canned couture will be on display this week at the college's Science in Style fashion show, Wired reports.
How does it work? The aerosol technology creates a thin layer of light, textured, nonwoven fibers that have the look of interconnected snowflakes. Fabrican says its benefits include allowing wearers to "personalize their wardrobes in infinite combinations."
StyleList thinks the innovation could do wonders for our shortage of closet space.
The spray-on fabric can be peeled off, washed, worn again, perfumed, and even decorated to create patterns, as shown on Fabrican's official site.
In the demonstrations, researchers create an elaborate dress on a model as well as a white, strapless blouse on a mannequin (watch the above video), folding down its edges for a sweet ruffle above the bust. Green scrolls are sprayed on the blouse for decorative effect.
"When I first began this project I wanted to make a futuristic, seamless, quick, and comfortable material," Manel Torres, a Spanish fashion designer and academic visitor at Imperial College said in a statement.
"In my quest to make the fabric, I ended up returning to the earliest principles of the earliest textiles, such as felt, which were also produced by taking fibers and finding a way of binding them together without having to weave or stitch them."
Torres worked with Paul Luckham, a professor of particle technology, to make the fabric.
No word on when the product will be available for retail.
