Clothes in a Can: Fabrican Comes Out with Spray-On Fabric

Shopping for clothes is fun but making your own can be even more fun, especially if you’re spraying them on. “Clothes in a can” is precisely what Fabrican aims to make possible.

The brainchild of designer Dr. Manuel Torres, the Fabrican is a spray-on fabric that is applied to the body, where it instantly dries, TG Daily informs.

Not only that, but clothes made with Fabrican (with a t-shirt requiring no less than 15 minutes on average to apply) can be taken out, washed and then worn again.

As with everything even remotely related to fashion, Fabrican fabrics are not all the same, even if the way they’re applied differs only as much as if you choose a can or a spray gun.

“The Fabrican Spray-on fabric consists of short fibers that are combined with polymers to bind the fibers together, and a solvent that delivers the fabric in liquid form and evaporates when the spray reaches a surface,” TG Daily says of the product.

“The spray can be applied using a high pressure spray gun or an aerosol can. The texture of the fabric can be changed according to which fibers are used – wool, linen or acrylic, for example – and how the spray is layered,” the same e-zine further notes.

Dr. Torres spent about 10 years working on his invention, motivated by his desire to create accessible clothes that are also original and, of course, cheap.

“When I first began this project I really wanted to make a futuristic, seamless, quick and comfortable material,” Torres says of Fabrican.

“As an artist I spend my time dreaming up one-off creations, but as a scientist I have to focus on making things reproducible. I want to show how science and technology can help designers come up with new materials,” he explains.

Now, Dr. Torres has teamed up with Paul Luckham of the Imperial College London to see if they could put his invention to new use, in areas like medicine, transport and the chemical industry.

Right now, the team is working on making spray-on bandages, which would not put any kind of pressure on the wound – or even on developing a means to deliver medicine straight to the wound based on the same idea.