Thomas Vailly and Laura Lynn’s 20 Minutes Dresses

Located in an empty factory in Eindhoven, the C-Fabriek is a group of young designers who have established a huge workshop, gallery and shop combination in an attempt to re-establish a relationship with their audience. Here the designers not only present their final works but all the processes and methods that bring them into being The beauty of the project however, is how they have achieved an alternative, up-to-date approach to industrial production on a smaller, more human scale.

French Thomas Vailly and Dutch Laura Lynn, both alumni of the nearby Design Academy Eindhoven, originally presented their production line 'Inner Fashion' as part of 14 productions lines created for the C-Fabriek exhibition during Dutch Design Week 2012 (as well as recently at Cascina Cuccagna, Milan). The whole fashion cycle process is cleverly presented and whittled down to within the space of a couple of square meters. Thomas is fascinated by process and the transformation of material. His work explores themes of consumption, commodification and industrial production perverting the material perfection of slick industrial design. Laura's creativeness lies at the cross section of different disciplines and varies from fashion to architecture via music and product design. She mixes and questions the code of each discipline by stretching their boundaries and is especially interested in dealing with the space around the human body in different scales.

Inner Fashion - Production Line at C-fabriek.

So with their utterly different approach towards design, Thomas Vailly and Laura Lynn took advantage of their duality and spurred by an accident, when some glue dropped onto some fabric, they begun exploring the way in which one material could shape another. Their research brought to life an entire product system.

Thomas Vailly and Laura Lynn give a step by step description of their project:
''Each garment is created from 2 layers (XS/XL): a tight & stretchy inner layer and a loose and non- stretchy outer layer. Both layers are dressed on a rubber balloon representing the human body. As the balloon fills up with air, the fabric of the inner layer stretches out. Where embroidery uses a needle and thread, inner fashion uses glue to speed up the fashion process. The glue bonds both layers together wherever it is applied. When the balloon is deflated, the inner layer stretches back to its original size. The tension of the stretchable fabric gathers the bonded points together to shape a garment. The inner layer wrinkles, bends and folds the outer layer instantly. The garment, a light fabric glued to a second skin, is shaped by plissé and drapery creating space around the human body.''

Without the need for the usual exorbitant machinery used in fashion textiles, 'Inner Fashion' or what the designers call ''Fast Fashion'', takes the manufacturing time down to approximately 20 minutes per dress, an immense feat when the traditional way of making plissé dresses takes up to 12 hours of work, is considered.