Nottingham Trent students show fashion designs at Spinexpo

20 Feb '14

5 min read

Fashion Knitwear students are also creating three individual looks to display on a separate stand and this year a handful of textile design graduates from the MA Textile Design course will be exhibiting their work at the expo.

The work of students will also be showcased by Consinee Cashmere, a world leader in luxury yarns, which asked third year textile design students to design embellishments for several of their high-quality cashmere products which they will display during the fair.

Nottingham Trent University’s links to SPINEXPO have proved instrumental in securing work placements and employment opportunities for graduates and raising the profile of the university internationally.

Cementing Nottingham Trent University’s expertise and reputation in the textile industry, for the first time the university’s Advanced Textile Research Group will showcase its cutting edge work.

Researchers in the group, including PhD student Anura Rathnayake and MA alumni Anna Piper, have produced a garment incorporating light emitting diodes (LEDs) to showcase a unique technology which could transform the manufacture of smart and interactive textiles.

Anna, who has been sponsored by the organisers of SPINEXPO to travel to the show and run a seminar about textile research at Nottingham Trent University with course leader for MA Fashion, Textiles and Knitwear, Dr Katherine Townsend, said: “Going to SPINEXPO and exhibiting my woven textiles is a great opportunity to share my design work with an international audience, to network and gain valuable feedback from industry which I can take forward in my future work.

As a weaver, it is also a brilliant opportunity to find out about new innovations in fibres and yarns, which will hopefully allow me to establish yarn sourcing contacts and gain inspiration for my research.”

Current techniques involve the insertion of the electronic module after the clothing has been produced, which results in it being inflexible and requires it to be removed before washing. But the group’s work in manufacturing Micro Electronic Textiles (MET) truly integrates the electronics into the fibre by embedding sensors, smaller than the size of a pinhead, into the heart of the yarn.

This process produces a smart textile which retains the fabric’s basic characteristics of being tactile, flexible, machine washable and can be tumble dried.

Professor Tilak Dias, who leads the Advanced Textiles Research Group at Nottingham Trent University, said: “The prototype uses LEDs but the technology will also lead to a wide range of applications for washable wearable electronics.

Nottingham Trent University

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