S7E09: Mark Bloomfield + Shaun Borstrock

Mark Bloomfield is a jewelry designer and the founder of Electrobloom. Shaun Borstrock is associate dean for business and innovation at the University of Hertfordshire and director of its Digital Hack Lab

Together Borstrock and Bloomfield run Modeclix, which makes modular 3D-printed textiles.

Modeclix draws upon Bloomfield’s experience with computer assisted design and additive manufacturing as well as Borstrock’s history of creating luxury designer fashion.

“A lot of 3D printed garments up until that point have been amazing structural forms,” Bloomfield says, telling an industry joke that most 3D printed clothes look great but you can’t sit down while wearing them:

Our objective was to make something that was wearable and would fit. And the idea of the links coming apart actually happened, we had failed build. I was playing with what had come out of that build. And it was like, Well, if I could just make this link detach and reattach, then I could repair it.

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By Jessica Helfand & Ellen McGirt

Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer and a former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Communications Arts and Eye magazines. A member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame, Helfand received her B.A. and her M.F.A. from Yale University where she has taught since 1994.

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Ellen McGirt is an author, podcaster, speaker, community builder, and award-winning business journalist. She is the editor-in-chief of Design Observer, a media company that has maintained the same clear vision for more than two decades: to expand the definition of design in service of a better world. Ellen established the inclusive leadership beat at Fortune in 2016 with raceAhead, an award-winning newsletter on race, culture, and business. The Fortune, Time, Money, and Fast Company alumna has published over twenty magazine cover stories throughout her twenty-year career, exploring the people and ideas changing business for good. Ask her about fly fishing if you get the chance.