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At the Paris Fashion week of 2022 Bella Hadid was observed walking on stage half naked. Two men surrounded her spraying her with what seemed to be white paint. But little did we know, in the next nine minutes it was a dress with the final touches of lowering the sleeves and a slit along the side. As the paint was sprayed on Bella Hadid you could see from images and videos strings of fiber flying in the air. The dress was presented by Coperni with Dr. Manel Torres as its designer and inventor of the technology. Coperni had reached out to Dr Manel Torres and in July of 2022 they visited his lab where Torres had created a dress for them. To complete the dress minor tweaks were added to the formula so that it would turn out a success.
Dr. Manel Torres first got the idea of spray on clothes back in his university days from a party with spray strings. He presented this idea as his doctoral thesis and later in 2003 made a reality. Fabrican, the spray on material, is said to act as a second skin. It can be removed and washed or simply dissolved and reused.
Fabrican can be made from different types of fibers, such as keratin fibers that consist of cotton, nylon, cellulose, wool and mohair, and carbon nanofibers. It is sprayed from an aerosol can where inside it is kept in liquid suspension. This liquid mainly contains polymers and additives that are binded with fibers. Though this wasn’t just some simple thing Dr. Manel Torres created. Only after ten years was he able to find the final recipe.
But, why hasn’t Fabrican hit the shelves? Well, according to some research, many people don’t like the fact that Fabrican molds your body, or shows off every curve as some people said. Although the recipe is complete there is room for improvements as Dr Torres is researching ways to reduce the smell of solvents found on the fabric.
Today Fabrican is mainly used to create clothes, but the hopes for the future is that it can be used for broader fields. In an interview with Aeworld Dr. Manel Torres says, “Fabrican is ultimately a technology and the beauty of this technology is that we can create applications for use in the medical industry, automotive processes, cosmetics, and many different fields as well as fashion which provides a great opportunity for us to collaborate with different sectors”. Dr. Manel Torres and his team were able to widely develop Fabrican in the medical field. Today Fabrican can be found as a quick method to relieve pain, or as they call it, CBD pain relief patches. This is most commonly used for sport injuries, such as muscle pains. Fabrican can also be found as dressings, bandages, casts, and patches.
What makes Fabrican even more special is that it absorbs oil. Think about it for a minute, all the things we could do with Fabrican since it absorbs oil, not only in our daily lives but globally. Imagine if this technology is the key to cleaning up oil tank disasters. If it could clean up such pollutant disasters, what else is it capable of? In the end, the Coperni show was truly an amazing event in history as well as spectacular and magical for everyone.
Sources:
This is the website of Fabrican. Here you can learn more about the use of Fabrican, it benefits, its application, and more.
This article focussed more on the aspects of the fashion show. Here you will be able to read more about how it all came together as well as how the dress was made. At the bottom you will also be able to find out why Coperni chose to do it this way for their fashion show.
This is the article where you will find a full interview of Dr Manel Torres about Fabrican. This is also where I got the quote from Manel Torres. Some questions and subjects from the interview include Manel Torres' inspirations, future projects, hopes, the technolgy, the fashion show, and much more.
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