This does look like a gag to me too, but 3D knitting technology is interesting. I have a pair of carbon-plate marathon race shoes made with 3D knitting. They're very light and very comfortable, with stretch in some axes and stiffness in others as needed, no seams but form-fit around my foot in compound curves.

Instead of making the thing out of 2D pieces of fabric, even stretchy knit fabric, and sewing those planar shapes together into something 3D, they made this as one continuous knit object that adds and drops stitches to give it shape without seams. The machines and programs that manipulate the yarn and partial garments, tying knots at crazy speeds to create something 3-dimensional out of something 1-dimensional, are just astonishing. Equally astonishing is the fact that with two sticks and their hands, it's not that challenging for a human knitter to do the same. I think that "knit a sock" is one of the most challenging tasks to give a humanoid robot.

They bought a bunch of 3D knitting machines to make Vision Pro headstraps, and since that isn't selling I guess they're using the excess capacity to make iPhone socks.

You can briefly see them in this ad: https://x.com/tim_cook/status/1748337010191077462

It certainly has that dual use.

> Inspired by the concept of “a piece of cloth”.

no https://us.isseymiyake.com/collections/pleatsplease

no, it's a whole garment knitting technique