HP Taiwan and Tsailiwei Company's textiles R&D department have partnered to produce a special new type of cloth which can be printed using a computer printer and CAD technology.
Designer Huang Jiaxiang has made up 30 outfits reflecting the new technology, which were put on display at an international exhibition on Wednesday. Recently, the project has attracted the attention of HP's large-format printers division, which will be putting in some financial support to shore up this new created-in-Taiwan product.
In recent years, textiles firms around the globe have contended to produce a product that is "printable," but the process design proved too complex and the cost of equipment too high to allow for broad application. Tsailiwei, which started out working with hot plastics, spent over three years of research to finally come up with the world's first, but as yet secret, process to produce truly inkjet printable textiles to provide a new technology to excite fashion designers.
Zhang Shuming, head of HP's imaging and printing technology and consumer business divisions, says that traditional textile printing required three weeks. However, the large-scale printer technology makes it possible to print any computer-designed pattern directly in just half a day.
To get this technology onto the world market, HP teamed up with Tsailiwei to find talented young designer Huang Jiaxiang, formerly with Zhou Jielun Designs and later of Ferragamo. In justthree months, Huang designed thirty outfits centered around six major themes, including "Colors of Nature," "Accuracy of Color," "Mysteries of the Orient," "Revisiting the Classics" and "Limitless Future Technology." A show was held in January at a hotel to introduce the "printed fashion."
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