By Artesia Rose
On May 3-5, the biennial Techtextil North America was held at the Georgia World Congress Center and a group of professors and students were fortunate to experience it all. This trade show is a big deal because it is the only one in America that is dedicated to technical textiles and nonwovens.
Attendees from both fashion design and fashion marketing and management departments of SCAD Atlanta were able to peruse the exhibition hall and learn about the different machinery and software programs that are used in the industry with some of the top designers. “It was a great experience to see the technology in person rather than in books,” says fashion marketing and management second year student Ana Rodriguez. Some company representatives even took time out to talk one-on-one with students and gave a presentation on how their technology actually works. One company specifically was Shima Seiki U.S.A. Inc which is located in New Jersey. Sales technician Emily Hung took special time out to walk the SCAD Atlanta group through their software to show how knits can be manipulated on screen in 2D before coming to life in 3D form.
This hands-on industry experience helped students put into perspective the future of their careers and all that is involved in the process of producing textiles for fashion. “It was really exciting to see the future of the textile industry. It was inspirational and mind-blowing what some of the companies were doing. Since I will be working with textiles as a fashion designer, it was also a very eye-opening experience into how I will work with the innovative textiles and machines in the future,” second year fashion student and fashion marketing and management minor Alexandra Porter.
Axiom America from North Carolina is another national textile company that was present at the fair. Their concentration lies heavily on digital textiles rather than knit manipulation and production. The company’s process is more straightforward as they simply go from software to printing on fabric to heat press fixation. Not only do they print on textiles for fabric, but furnishings and decor as well.
By far this was an amazing experience to network and gain industry knowledge. The way technology advances so quickly, who knows what will be at the next Techtextil in 2018.
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