Who knew your printer was fashion's new best friend?
NEW YORK -- Printers are no longer just for homework assignments.
When you hear the word "Epson," visions of swag don't really dance in your head. Well, the electronics company has decided to change that. The Japanese brand has teamed up with the fashion industry in hopes of elevating its cool factor and facilitating textile printing at the same time.
Epson hosted its second annual Digital Couture event Tuesday, where 11 designers from North and South America debuted collections printed exclusively using Epson technology.
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What does "electronic printing" exactly mean?
For one thing, it doesn't mean the clothes were 3D-printed. That's something else entirely.
But what it does mean is that designers created their own textiles digitally and brought them to tangible life using Epson's printers. That's right, you can use a printer on fabric — and a variety of fabrics, at that — which we learned Tuesday night.
This innovation was especially important to Los Angeles designer Chloe Trujillo, who has been hand-painting clothing for years. Incorporating her art into her work is of the utmost importance to her, as she considers herself "an artist first, and a designer second."
"This technology respects the colors I use, and the details ... I've tried [other printing technology] before, and the colors weren't as vibrant," Trujillo said. "The process of my art is very spiritual. Colors are very important to me. A certain blue means something depending on the context of the whole."
Brooklyn designer Cristina Ruales and Miami designer Danny Santiago, of Santika, echoed Trujillo's sentiment. The technology made the textile creation process more efficient, Epson printing stayed true to the colors and shapes the designers wanted, and all three said they'd like to use the printers again in the future.
Though it sounds too good to be true, this technology might actually be worth the hype. The move from tactile art to digital execution isn't a new concept; graphic design made the switch in 2003 when Adobe developed its Creative Suite, and people haven't been hand-lettering typography for ages. It's fashion's turn to maximize production efficiency and Epson wants to usher in that change.
"This industry is at the beginning of a dramatic change," Keith Kratzberg, Epson's executive vice president, told Mashable. "Our technology gives designers the ability to design whatever they can possibly imagine. It gives them all this creative freedom and lets them produce it with a fast turnaround."
Will Epson pervade the industry the way it hopes to?
If the printing process went as well as Digital Couture's designers said, we see no reason big names won't jump on board. Epson just might have to keeping working to make itself synonymous with "fashion" and "cool" to make itself known in the industry.
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