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Make Clothes Out of a Can With Spray-On Fabric

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS282659948320100916

Tight-fitting t-shirts and hipster jeans could get even more snug if you could just spray them on.

That idea just got a little less far-fetched. A liquid mixture developed by the Imperial College London and a company called Fabrican lets you spray clothes directly onto your body using aerosol technology.

After the spray dries, it creates a thin layer of fabric that it can be peeled off, washed and re-worn.

“When I first began this project I really wanted to make a futuristic, seamless, quick and comfortable material,” says Manel Torres, a Spanish fashion designer and academic visitor at Imperial College in a statement. Torres worked with Paul Luckham, a professor of particle technology at the Imperial College to create the material.

“In my quest to produce this kind of fabric, I ended up returning to the principles of the earliest textiles such as felt, which were also produced by taking fibers and finding a way of binding them together without having to weave or stitch them,” says Torres.

Clothes designed using the spray-on fabric will be shown at a ‘Science in Style’ fashion show next week at Imperial College.

Spray-painting the body has been around for a while, and you can even getspray-on latex body paint (warning: NSFW)). And who can forget the amazing spray-on hair, a staple of Ronco infomercials in the 1980s? But these are illusions, tricks to deceive the eye. The spray-on fabric, in contrast, is lightweight and can be stored in your closet with other clothes.


The spray-on fabric consists of short fibers that are combined with polymers to bind them together and a solvent that delivers the fabric in liquid form. The mixture evaporates when the spray touches the surface.

The fabric is formed by the cross-linking of fibers, which cling to one another to create the garment, says Fabrican.

The spray-on fabric can be pretty versatile. It can be created in many colors and and can use different types of fibers ranging from natural to the synthetic, says the company.

The spray can be applied using a high pressure spray gun or an aerosol can. The texture of the fabric changes according to the type of material such as wool, linen or acrylic and how the spray is layered on the body.

Fabrican says the technology is not just for fashion but can have some innovative use in medicine to layer bandages on the skin without disturbing the wound.

The technology is still in prototype stage and some kinks still need to be worked out, such as the strong smell of solvent around the fabric. The researchers estimate that it will be at least a few years before it can be ready for commercial use.

Another challenge is to find a way to use the spray to create clothes that aren’t very snug. After all, with the obesity in America, the sprayed-on look for clothes might not work for everyone.

Check out the video below showing how to create a spray-on scarf.


3 Responses
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Avatar universal
Yeah, sort of like when short shorts and halter tops first came out. They looked great on models, yet those were not the ones wearing them! Gross! Can you just imagine, especially with obesity so high in our country. I can just imagine what this will look like on my husband who has dickie doo disease!

Thats where the tummy sticks out farther than the dickie doo! In case you didnt know!
Helpful - 0
649848 tn?1534633700
I can see it now --- "muffin tops" everywhere you look!!!  

Don't we have enough people running around in too tight clothing, showing off WAY more bulges and bumps than most of us really want to see??
Helpful - 0
1301089 tn?1290666571
This puts a new spin on the old "She makes all her own clothes." !!
Helpful - 0
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