Every year, Met Gala, one of the most coveted costume parties in the world, is held at Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, attracting personalities from Hollywood and social celebrities. Created in 1948, its purpose is to raise funds for the Costume Institute, an arm of the renowned museum located on Fifth Avenue, in Manhattan.
The gala attendants’ dresses and outfits are a stunning show. This year, particularly, five outfits drew attention. They were developed by stylist Zac Posen in partnership with GE Additive (specialized in creating new materials and production of parts for aerospace, medical and automotive industries), and made with 3D printers from Protolabs, which operates in prototyping and on-demand production industry.

1,500 hours of 3D printing
Actresses Katie Holmes, Nina Dobrev and Julia Garner, model Jourdan Dunn, and Bollywood celebrity Deepika Padukone were chosen to wear the outfits that, altogether, took more than 1,500 hours of printing. According to Posen, the concept for the looks was to capture still images of moving natural objects.

Jourdan Dunn wore a dress with 21 stylized rose petals, each with a length of 50 cm and weighing 30 pounds. The petals are unique and designed to fit Dunn’s body, which was scanned before production. A titanium structure was used as foundation to fit the petals and the entire dress printing took about 1,100 hours.
Nina Dobrev wore a bustier printed in four parts using translucent plastic. Dobrev’s body was also scanned before making the outfit to ensure a perfect fitting. A clear coat was applied to give it a glass appearance. Over 200 hours of 3D printing completed the outfit.

Katie Holmes wore a neck ornament mimicking a stylized palm leaf. Made with Accura 60, a type of plastic, the object was painted purple. Smaller, the object was done in 56 hours. Julia Garner also picked an ornament and wore the outfit, mimicking a vine headpiece. It took 22 hours to print, in nylon, the stylized vineyard. Finally, Deepika Padukone wore a dress with unique embroideries printed and vacuum-metalized, a process which took 160 hours.

What about you? Do you see yourself wearing a 3D printed outfit?
Content published in June 4, 2019