Refashion: Reconfigurable Garments via Modular Design

TL;DR

Refashion introduces a modular garment design framework that decomposes clothing into reusable rectangular modules connected by bidirectional seam interfaces. The system defines three module types—foundation, pleat, and dart—with a Δ-grid based pattern representation and an ILP-based decomposition to minimize the number of modules, enabling resizing, restyling, and textile reuse without sewing. Implemented in Refashion Studio, the tool provides Pattern Editor, Assembly, and Simulation views to design, assemble, and preview garments on 3D body models. User studies and fabrication demonstrations show the approach supports a wide range of garments and practical reconfiguration while reducing material waste and enabling rapid prototyping.

Abstract

While bodies change over time and trends vary, most store-bought clothing comes in fixed sizes and styles and fails to adapt to these changes. Alterations can enable small changes to otherwise static garments, but these changes often require sewing and are non-reversible. We propose a modular approach to garment design that considers resizing, restyling, and reuse earlier in the design process. Our contributions include a compact set of modules and connectors that form the building blocks of modular garments, a method to decompose a garment into modules via integer linear programming, and a digital design tool that supports modular garment design and simulation. Our user evaluation suggests that our approach to modular design can support the creation of a wide range of garments and can help users transform them across sizes and styles while reusing the same building blocks.

Figures (30)

• Figure 1: Three common fabric-shaping techniques: (a) gathers join a longer panel edge to a shorter one via soft, evenly spaced folds to add fullness to garments; (b) pleats double fabric back onto itself in structured and secured folds to vary garment volume and style; and (c) darts remove wedge-shaped sections of fabric to contour garments to the body.
• Figure 2: A $\Delta \times \Delta$ foundation module (left) and one possible implementation (right), featuring two connection points per edge and a seam allowance of $\delta$.
• Figure 3: Our seam interface supports two types of seams. A flat seam joins two edges of equal length by aligning fasteners in a one-to-one correspondence. A gathered seam connects a longer edge (dashed) to a shorter edge by pairing two fasteners on the longer side with one on the shorter. Because the interface is bidirectional, either panel may lie on top. In the fabricated examples, panel A lies atop B for the flat seam, while B lies atop A for the gathered seam.
• Figure 4: A pleat module can be folded in two directions by connecting seam interface pins to pleat interface sockets: (1) right by connecting left pins to right sockets ($L^{+} \rightarrow R^{-}$), or (2) left by connecting right pins to left sockets ($R^{+} \rightarrow L^{-}$).
• Figure 5: Arrangements of pleat modules to achieve knife, box, and inverted box pleats.