Knitwear Company UNMADE Redefines Made-to-Order
In the world of fashion, knitting machines are equivalent to tech’s 3D printers, allowing individuals to make tangible the products of their creativity. London-based company Unmade can produce, from scratch, one-of-a-kind knitwear personalized by customers, ranging from £60 for a scarf and £220 for a cashmere jumper.
Image Credit: Richard Saker.
Ben Alun-Jones and Hal Watts, both engineers, and Kirsty Emery, a knitwear designer, decided to start a knitwear company that would eliminate the waste produced by mass-manufacturing brands. Utilizing modern technology, they bring “coding to power knitting machines as though they are 3D printers.” That means no fabric goes to waste, as each garment is made-to-order.
Up to 25 percent of clothes end up in landfills, never sold, and to address the problem of “surplus,” Unmade allows you to design unique knits, executed to your liking. The challenge that arises, says Alun-Jones, is to “effectively show a garment that doesn't yet exist, in all of its multiple variations, and to make it look real enough that you'd want to wear it.”
The “unmaking” process begins when you go online to browse the different designs, which are made variations of its calibration jumper. The personalization software “uses an isometric grid of 600+ plotted reference points” to digitally map out the design.
Once you select the pattern – windowpane checks, for example – you can interact with it by warping it and changing colors. If your pattern choice is a cluster of hearts, you can adjust its size and placement, moving it from top right shoulder to bottom left waist. You are there are every step of the creative process.
Variations of the grid pattern at Unmade. Image Credit: Unmade.
After you place your order, the knitting machines translate the pattern to product in either 100% Australian Merino wool or a high-grade cashmere, both sourced from Italy. The edges are finished by hand, and its final touch is a label with the your name and order number. With only five exclusive pieces per day, that number represents a unique project, your identity woven into a garment.
