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Comment by m-a-t-t-i | Hacker News Reader

Working on fabric construction blocks (like Lego of clothing), that you can use to build clothing and accessories completely by hand without any tools or machines.

Intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_eKc6c5tDw

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Clever seams. Have you tried washing any of the garments?

Yeah, I've been wearing and washing the prototypes for years now.

I would love a set of these! I've seen a few "legos of clothing" ideas out there but I believe this is my favorite execution of it so far. It lends itself to the "gorpcore" style of clothing like Cotopaxi where its blocks of different color. Even with the monochrome examples in your video, I love the texture inherent to its linkage.

Brilliant work! Zippers got nothing on this! I am particularly taken by how the "stich" weaves into itself, to flatten the seam.

Now, what about footwear, I'm thinking. Stitched soles + uppers are so much more durable. If you could cut a sole to a person's foot size, then they could construct the upper to their best-fit, best-colour-combo design.

I've tried some footwear! These had a really soft rubber soles, but I've also made ones where the soles were cut from a sheet of hard Vibram rubber: https://self-assembly.fi/canvas-shoes

So cool! So, I buy this brand of thin-sole shoes called Xero. Their Do It Yourself kit is a simple Vibram sole I can cut to size, a hole punch to find the right fit, and a long lace that I can tie in many different ways, including as a slipper, or sandal, or greek-style laced-up huarache. Tie style, with different colour combinations of sole and lace make for distinctive personalisation.

Your stuff takes it to a whole other level. It makes me imagine a constructible footwear that can morph from a flip-flop (band across foot) all the way up to an all-weather knee-length boot.

No doubt you have already imagined how experimentation with materials and sealing/binding techniques could yield a design system that everyone can make their own; from the multi-spectral La Sape, to baby wear for those fast-growth years, to field equipment for the extreme adventurer.

(edit: fixed broken sentence)

Yeah, morphing is really the key idea here. You don't have to make all design decisions beforehand, but can wear something for a while and then make changes based on your needs & observations.

I haven't quite figured out how to apply this thinking to seam sealing though. The current garments that have taped / waterproof seams are locked into the taped configuration. For tents I have some geometrically water repellent structures (that guide the water away as long as it's coming from above), but for the soles of footwear, you might want something 100% sealed.

This is insanely amazing. The youtube video is so well-created. I hope to see this become successful!

This is actually very therapeutic to watch! All the best

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this is a really important and disruptive idea. amazing.

what do you need to scale this?

I needed my own CAD setup that can draw the detailed assembly instructions as 3D vector drawings. And that can also derive the assembly order from a graph based garment representation automatically. I'm almost finished with those, so after that I just need more large format laser cutters and customers.

ah this is fascinating!!!! Any more info anywhere?

Here's a recent interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85fy8cXpkyk

Also, I've been working on this for a while under a beta version called Self-Assembly, which was a bit more fashion oriented. New i-t-s-e rebranding is to be more Lego like. Here's the old website: www.self-assembly.fi

this is simply great! godspeed with the project!

looks so cool and cyberpunk-y in an odd way.

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