Braided Textiles
DESIGN: Katharina Halusa
Austria
make me! 2022
The fashion industry is the second largest polluter in the world. It takes a rethink about how we produce our garments in the future.
“Braided Textiles” explores textile braiding as an alternative material in accessories and clothing. Braiding is one of the oldest traditional craft techniques in human history for the production of everyday objects. An innovative production process modernises the craft of braiding, revitalizing traditional braiding with a robotics and machine-supported process.
Materiality that follows the individual body shape and adapting to the body’s individual needs. In cooperation with the TUM Munich, Chair of Carbon Composites prototypes were produced on the radial braiding machine. In the composites industry, machine braiding is already an established manufacturing process to produce composite preforms for automobile, aviation or medical applications. In the fashion industry braiding could be a sustainable and resource-saving alternative production method to produce textile fabrics directly in the needed shape of the clothing. Within a few seconds, the machine produces out of knitting yarns a textile material that combines properties of woven and knitted fabrics.
The aim of “Braided Textiles” is to use this process to generate a new innovative type of a seam-less textile fabric for an application in fashion and to open new aesthetic (material-specific) perspectives in fashion design and furthermore in fashion production.
Braided Textiles, design: Katharina Halusa / from designer’s archive
Braided Textiles, design: Katharina Halusa / from designer’s archive
Braided Textiles, design: Katharina Halusa / from designer’s archive
KATHARINA HALUSA
An interdisciplinary textile designer with a focus on experimental material research and 3D-fashion design based in Vienna, Austria. After graduating at the College for Fashion, Design & Textiles in Vienna she is currently studying Fashion & Technology at the University of Art and Design Linz, Austria.
Since 2022 she is a Graduate Researcher in the PEEK project “FAR – Fashion and Robotics within the department Fashion & Technology and Creative Robotics at the University of Art and Design Linz, to research new, sustainable fashion design processes in a creative context.
In her own creative research she explores the potential of emerging technologies and innovative techniques to revitalize traditional craftmanship by creating three-dimensional shaped textile materials. With „Braided Textiles” she wants to enable a new way of creating fashion alternatively, for a textile future that is more sustainable and less harmful to both, human and planet.
