Ep 35. Weaving out Waste: How WEFFAN is Forming Garments within Fabric with Graysha Audren
No Ordinary Cloth: Textile innovations in future materials, manufacturing and sustainabilityShow Notes
What if the fashion industry didn't have to create waste in the first place? In this episode of No Ordinary Cloth, Mili sits down with textile designer and founder of WEFFAN, Graysha Audren, to explore a radically different way of making clothes: garments that are folded, flat‑packed and "baked" straight into the weave on a jacquard loom.
From an olive‑green 3D‑woven shirt on a small table at Future Fabrics Expo to a 3D‑woven tailored suit in Balenciaga stores, Graysha walks us through how WEFFAN's origami‑inspired 3D weaving technology embeds garment shape directly into the fabric, designs out off‑cut waste, and collapses traditional textile and garment manufacturing into a single, elegant workflow.
Along the way, we talk about the craft behind this innovation, the human journey of building an idea from student "baby trousers" to couture‑level production, and what it might mean for the factories, designers and weavers who shape fashion's future.
In this conversation, we discuss
* How WEFFAN's 3D weaving process "flat‑packs" garments inside the fabric and releases them into 3D form through a cut‑and‑release step. * Why waste is a design decision, and how embedding garment shape in the weave can remove off‑cuts and reduce yarn use before waste is ever created * The Balenciaga collaboration: what it took to go from experiment to a 3D‑woven tailored suit on the shop floor, and what changed in production lead times and sew time * The new design language of 3D‑woven garments – seamless pockets, pattern‑matched stripes, engineered fabric densities and mono‑material construction that's easier to recycle. * Bringing together software, jacquard weaving and origami logic to build a plug‑and‑play system that works on existing looms, rather than asking the industry to invest in new hardware * What this technology could mean for on‑demand manufacturing, shorter supply chains and the factories of the future where fabric and garment are made in one step * Graysha's personal story: from Central Saint Martins and an obsession with textiles to the "baby trouser" that sparked WEFFAN, and why she now sees her youthful naïveté as an advantage in rethinking old systems
Key takeaways
* Designing out waste starts at the design stage: when we change the construction logic, we change the amount of fabric and time a garment requires. * 3D weaving on existing jacquard looms can be both deeply craft‑based and radically efficient, opening a new aesthetic and technical language for woven garments without discarding the skills and machines we already have.
WEFFAN: Website [https://www.weffan.co/] | Linkedin [https://www.linkedin.com/in/graysha-audren/]
Connect with Mili: LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjtharakan/] I Insta [https://www.instagram.com/noordinarycloth/] I Buy me a coffee [https://buymeacoffee.com/noordinarycloth]
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Recommended listening for 3D garment construction technologies:
Ep 13. 3D Weaving Yarns into Garments and Zero Inventory Circular Fashion with Beth Esponnette
Ep 28. AI Robotics for Fabrics and the Future of Stitcheless Garment Making with Cam Myers
Cover art: Photo by Siora, Photography on Unsplash. Music: Inspired Ambient, Orchestraman
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