Earlier this year, the Eurasian Union, the bloc made of Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, sparked controversy when they issued a ban on the import and production of synthetic lace lingerie. While the ban was ostensibly intended to protect consumers from buying underwear made of low-quality, possibly hazardous synthetic fibers, many Russian and Kazakh women were outraged and protested the law in the streets, to no avail.
Since the ban on synthetic lingerie officially took effect July 1, one lingerie brand has cleverly found a loophole in the law that allows them to sell lacy underthings in the E.U. The German intimate apparel brand Lascana has recruited a Russian designer to 3D print a line of custom-made lingerie, which is perfectly legal to buy and sell. Yay, political subversion in the form of cute underwear!
Exhibited at the St. Petersburg tech fair and created by Russian designer Victoria Anoka with Russian 3D printing company 3D Printus, the underwear is a two-piece bra and panty set made out of nylon, embellished with pearls, clamshells, and scalloped edges. It looks a bit like the kind of thing you’d wear if you wanted to get laid at a nautical-themed frat party, but the set is fairly cheap (it’ll cost $80 when it goes live on Lascana’s website in November) and it’s available in white, so you have the freedom to paint your panties any color your sexy mermaid heart desires.
Lascana obviously isn’t the only lingerie brand to branch out into the 3D printed garment space. Last year, designer Bradley Rothenberg debuted his 3D-printed bra-and-panty set made of nylon fibers and Swarovski crystals at the Victoria’s Secret fashion show, and the lingerie giant has also toyed with launching a mass-produced line of soft, breathable garments in collaboration with the 3D-printing firm Tamicare.
But aside from its attempts to take aim at a ridiculous E.U. law (however well-intentioned it might have been), Lascana is also hoping that the new lingerie will prove to the rest of the world that Russia is at the forefront of textile tech. “We are opening the future through the use of promising technology like 3-D printing. It’s amazing, and we were the first in Russia to demonstrate that you can ‘print’ underwear with a printer,” Ksenia Shilkina, the managing director of Lascana, told the Moscow Times.
Update 3:12pm CT, Oct. 6: Lascana issued a statement saying there’s no connection in its product to the lingerie law ban: “The first and the most important one is that 3D underwear is only an innovation project. This pilot project has nothing in common with the lingerie law and the ban of lace.”
H/T 3D Print | Photo via 3D Print
