The Leading Innovation in Fashion Technology lab (FX LIFT) provides our students and industry partners with a suite of technologies that will bring products to market in a faster and more sustainable way—producing designs locally and with less waste. We are excited about the potential to transform the fashion industry. Implementation of these new technologies provide local industry with access to equipment to conduct research, to integrate innovation and bring their products to the market faster.

Laser cutting can be used by designers to cut designs into materials or to engrave designs onto the surface.  Very fine details and intricate patterns can be achieved on most textiles with clean, perfectly sealed edges on synthetic materials.  Designers can test their imagination to achieve effects that couldn’t have been done before, with precision and speed.  Examples are: combining cut out layers with underlying fabrics of different colours, using cut outs for lace like or weblike effects, or by replicating minute cuts in repeat patterns. In fashion, laser cutting works well with many natural and synthetic fibres, and heavier textiles such as denim,  lightweight such as jersey knits, but also leather, wood, and acrylic for accessory projects. With the Trotec laser cutter at FX, designers are able to work with us to utilize this technology in their production.