Brand Designer

I run the brand ORBWEAVER which uses nature to inspire fashion. Our work lives in the realm of body architecture, forging a new path forward to show what the future of wearable design can be. Using advanced tools and methods such as computational digital modeling and additive manufacturing, the brand creates a space to explore the possibilities of cutting-edge tech and the relationship that our bodies have with it, while taking inspiration from the dynamic world all around us. You can find our work on insta: @robot.objects @orbweaver.shop and on the web: www.rjweaver.studio

About the Designs

I’ll be walking two looks down the runway this year. The first, a beautifully intricate white dress named “butterfly in flight.” It started life as the result of a week’s long exploration into training an AI model on my past work, which led me to creating a set of photos that blurred the line between natural organism and fashion statement. Upon seeing these photos, my close friend and collaborator Christine Roman was the driving force behind bringing this dress into reality, and we wanted to use 3D printing techniques to accomplish the design. The dress has been 3D printed out of this lovely soft TPU material from the Netherlands that Christine introduced me too, and the form itself was hand-made in virtual reality, based on a digital scan of the model to ensure a perfect fit. This required some technical innovation in processing this fluid form into a 3D-print-ready format, and we used procedural design techniques to break the form into discrete pattern sections that could be unrolled and laid flat to optimize time and material usage on a machine with a 300mm^3 printing volume. Once sewn back into its final form, this dress used about 1.4kg of soft material, and took about 2 weeks to fully manufacture.

The second dress, an exciting interpretation of blooming, is named “orchid in bloom.” This design started more traditionally with a simple sketch planning out the silhouette and then was brought to life using virtual reality tools again to sculpt these expressive forms. The top half was 3D printed in 18 separate parts at the research lab I run here at VT, and is one of my largest wearable sculptures to date. The purple/black colorway chosen for this dress intends to mimic a flower in full bloom, with the skirt acting as fluttering petals. One special note about this design, the dress has 2 states, one with the voluminous black tulle, and second, the tulle can disconnected and left behind to fully bloom this dress out of the darkness and into full vibrancy!

I draw inspiration from natural forces and the microscopic rules + mathematical equations that define life, death, and rebirth. These powers lead to such intriguing visual patterning and structural detail if you look close enough, and I use the word biomorphism to describe how these organic elements transfer into wearable sculpture. A lot of my work comes into existence through research in either algorithmic design, mixed reality, artificial intelligence, or generative design, and how these fields can intersect with jewelry and fashion design. A few years ago, I started a fashion collective known as BioTech Couture with 3 close friends, Leah, Mariam, and Minakshi, and there I got my start as we combined the studies of Biomedical Engineering and Industrial Design to emphasize the expressive connections between our bodies and technology in our rapidly advancing society.

Designer Shoutouts:

Christine Roman