The bespoke software behind it, called Kinematics, combines origami techniques with novel approaches to 3-D printing, pushing the technology's limits.

Instead of pinning fabric to a dress form, a Kinematics garment starts as a 3-D model in a CAD program. Kinematics breaks the model down into tessellated, triangular segments of varying sizes. Designers can control the size, placement, and quantity of the triangles in a Javascript-based design tool and preview how the changes will impact the polygonal pinafore. Once the designer is satisfied, algorithms add hinges to the triangles uniting the garment into a single piece and compress the design into the smallest possible shape to optimize the printing process, often reducing the volume by 85 percent.

After two days of printing at Shapeways, a dusty boulder of plastic emerges from an industrial-sized 3-D printer. Technicians remove excess dust like archeologists in search of a long-buried garment. The plastic parts are cleaned and dyed, resulting in a little black (or white) dress made from tiny, interlocking bricks of plastic.