Amid this heyday of digital fashion, one tech-focused company has its eye decidedly fixed on physical clothes - and is trying to change everything about the way they're made.
San Francisco-based CreateMe is developing a system for on-demand clothing manufacturing and embellishment at scale that takes cues from assembly line production. Think Henry Ford meets Tom Ford, but tricked out with robotics and cloud computing.
The twist: The garments aren't attached with thread, but bonded with an advanced polymer, effectively replacing sewing with high-tech glue.
WWD caught up with the company at SSW, where, as a Warner Bros. partner, its new CreateMe Live on-demand customization tech was put to use, printing up and embroidering hundreds of sweatshirts, bandanas and other swag daily with Tweety Birds, DC superhero emblems and more.
CreateMe Live serves brands such as Levi's and Ralph Lauren, as well as live events. But it's just one part of a broader system that - the company hopes - may change the face of apparel production.
What holds it all together looks like literal glue, or rather, the advanced polymer. CreateMe's approach to automating garment production can't work without it.
Fabrics and knits are soft and stretchable, making sewing impractical, if not impossible, to automate at high speeds and at high volume, Campbell Myers, founder and co-chief executive officer, explained to WWD. To get around that issue, CreateMe came up with a new process to apply dots of polymer instead to mimic stitches.
Read the full article by Adriana Lee on WWD.
