SXEMA × YOUTH · 2023

YOUTH / Generative Outerwear

How can generated graphics and 3D garment development support the handover from artwork to a manufactured jacket?

My contribution: Project leadership, generative graphics, 3D jacket development, and production preparation
Collaborators: The founder of YOUTH and artists from the SXEMA community
Production: 1,000 jackets per colourway · Manufactured in China

Question

How could generated graphics become a repeatable print across the panels of a manufactured jacket? After seeing Panelki, YOUTH’s founder invited us to collaborate. Here we applied imagery to existing fabric, rather than creating an image through knitted structure.

My role and collaborators

I led the collaboration, invited SXEMA artists, contributed imagery, and developed the jacket’s construction in CLO. I coordinated artwork preparation and the production handover. Graphics were a shared contribution; YOUTH managed the release and sales, and a factory in China manufactured the garments.

Experiment: artwork → placement → production

We developed generated graphics, checked their scale and placement in CLO across pattern pieces, seams and quilted panels, then prepared artwork and print specifications for the factory. The specification sheets and digital jacket below show this transition.

The generative graphics remained part of a collaborative production process: artwork and specifications needed technical checks before factory handover.

Result and limitation

The factory produced 1,000 jackets in each colourway. The collaboration expanded to bags and backpacks, and I presented the approach at a Yandex conference.

The collection took generated artwork through 3D development and print preparation into retail production. Technical checks remained essential at the factory handover—a transition I want to make easier to inspect and repeat.

Generative graphics and print preparation

Production sheet · AOP print 1, organic motif.

Production sheet · AOP print 3, branching network.

Digital garment development

My jacket design in CLO, with the 3D garment beside its printed 2D pattern pieces — My 3D garment and pattern development in CLO.

Physical garments

A generative print beside the matching jacket — Generative print and matching jacket · Original project presentation.

Public presentation · Yandex conference, November 2023

Making and presenting the project

From developing the collection to presenting our approach at the Yandex conference: on 28 November 2023, I shared the project on stage at VTB Arena in Moscow with an audience of 4,500. Another 10,000 people watched the livestream.