The Verlan dress is 3d printed by MarkerBot, now commercially available machine. The dress is the final result of the three-week digital fashion workshop held by fashion designer Fransis Bitonti, in New York. The theme of the project was not to design a piece of clothes but to design a method of making form using computers. Students therefore experimented with form-building software and created samples, using 3d printers. The workshop took place at the Digital Arts and Humanities Research Center of the Pratt Institute in New York.

By employing the MakerBot, which is sold in US by Microsoft, the students were in a direct relation with the material world, unlike the process which would end in the computer only, limited to complex computer simulations without getting tactile, physical results. In Bitonti’s words, the main idea was to create a landscape of geometric effects, things that would have different material behaviors in different parts of the body.

The final dress was a combination of few chosen pieces by jurors, including designer Vito Acconci. It was further printed in sections using a new flexible filament, printed by MakerBot. The result was a garment that referenced muscle fibers, veins and arteries to look like an inside-out body. The fashion piece was named Verlan Dress after the French slang word for the reversal of syllables.

Francis Bitonti previously designed Dita Von Teese’s burlesque dress, in cooperation with designer Michael Schmidt, using selective laser sintering.