Ever thought the day would come when you could print out a designer dress at home from a blueprint? An exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston lets you take a glimpse into that future. The “#techstyle” exhibition runs until July 10, 2016 and explores how designers are looking into cutting-edge technology to find new avenues for design and manufacturing. The exhibition includes pieces from big-name luxury labels such as Alexander McQueen, Victor & Rolf, Iris Van Herpen and Ralph Lauren in a showcase of over 60 artworks, gaments, accessories, videos and photographs.

Viktoria Modesta and “The Spike”

One of these new designs in question is the Kinematics Dress by Nervous Systems. Founded by Jessica Rosenkranz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg, graduates from MIT, the studio came up with a method of 3D-printing a dress that was supple and comfortably wearable. The technology had been used before but for more ‘sculptured’ and hard pieces that were printed in parts, but with the Kinematics Dress, the printed product is the end-product and it doesn’t need any hand assembly. The dress was made by linking together a large number of interlocking pieces on computer before feeding the data to the printer to print.

Ralph Lauren’s Ricky Bag with Light

Other advancements include dresses that react directly with their environment. Montreal-based fashion designer Ying Gao created Incertitudes – a dress covered in dressmaker pins that reacts to voice, creating a wavelike motion.

Iris Van Herpen’s Crystallization Dress

Further interesting designs are the artificial ‘leg-spike’ worn by amputee pop singer Viktoria Modesta, the Ricky Bag with Light by Ralph Lauren (a bag with an interior light and built-in phone charger), and the Crystallization dress by Iris Van Herpen (developed using images of water splashing against a model’s body).

Beyond just aesthetics, exciting developments in the world of fashion could speak towards a revolutionary and interesting future.

Images courtesy of Iris Van Herpen, Ralph Lauren and MFA Boston