How Susan Fang Used Bambu Lab Printers to Create Runway Illusions

3D printing has made its way onto another catwalk. This time, it was designer Susan Fang who brought it to London Fashion Week, unveiling her Spring/Summer 2027 collection, Air-Illusion, at the Barbican Centre on September 18. With Bambu Lab as official technology partner, several pieces were produced on its machines, including 3D printed flip-flops, 3D printed lace and machine-cut flowers.

Fang founded her label in 2017 and has long combined handcraft with technology, including 3D printed accessories. This show marked her second collaboration with Bambu Lab in 2026. In March, her Fall/Winter 2026 collection, Air-Infinity, at Shanghai Fashion Week featured 3D printed spiral flats inspired by ice cream swirls, printed in TPU and then dyed by hand.

From invitations to seat gifts

For some guests, the 3D printing started before they even arrived. They received a printer in place of a paper invitation, which then printed the invite itself. Content creator Olivia Yang documented the process on TikTok, calling the finished piece a true “air illusion.”

True to the collection’s theme, the invite is a 3D printed sculpture that changes with perspective. Seen from above, it forms a heart. From another angle, it reveals the SUSAN FANG four-leaf clover monogram. The invitation file is available to print on MakerWorld, Bambu Lab’s model-sharing platform.

The seat gift came straight from the 3D printing community. In September, Susan Fang, Bambu Lab and MakerWorld launched a design challenge asking makers to create a flower vase brooch rooted in trompe-l’oeil, the art of making something look like what it is not. Entries could hide, distort or transform their meaning. Fang also encouraged designers to push 3D printing toward shapes and effects that traditional craft would struggle to achieve.

On show day, guests found the result waiting on their velvet seats: Bloomwing, a butterfly-shaped magnet brooch by MakerWorld designer Fiornova, its pale blue wings cradling a real flower. Like the invitation, it’s available for anyone to print on MakerWorld.

A collection built on optical illusion

Air-Illusion borrows its premise from M. Butterfly, in which a French diplomat falls for a Chinese opera singer who is not who he believes. In a backstage interview with BRICKS, Fang said the collection explores how people believe in things that are not fully true, while “the love and the feeling remains true.”

On the runway, that idea became garments and accessories that change as the viewer moves. The clearest example is the 3D printed Air-Illusion flip-flop, designed by Orelio De Jonghe, Fang’s husband and the label’s head of 3D design and accessories. A former senior industrial designer at Dyson, he based the design on a grid of small cubes. From most angles it reads as an abstract piece, and only from one viewpoint does the familiar thong shape emerge. Speaking to Hello! Fashion, Fang described it simply: from one angle “you see just a normal flip-flop,” and from another it looks blown apart.

The runway pairs were printed on a Bambu Lab H2D. Its two nozzles made it possible to combine soft TPU and rigid PLA in a single build. The flip-flops weren’t the only printed footwear. The final look was styled with heels covered in clusters of blossoming flowers, which Fang said were also 3D printed.

3D printed lace on organza

For Fang, the lace is an optical illusion of its own: it looks like the real thing, but it was 3D printed. Its flower motifs come from Chinese porcelain painting. Using a Bambu Lab A2L, the studio printed them in bright colors directly onto organza. Because the A2L has an open frame, the fabric could run beyond the build plate, so the lace came out in one continuous length.

Fang told TheIndustry that bright colors are common in 3D printing but hard to achieve with dye, calling the result “a balance of maybe the past and the present.”

Cutting as well as printing

Fang’s team also stepped outside the bounds of additive manufacturing. As shown below, the A2L’s cutting module was used to cut the flowers for the air-puzzle dresses. According to Bambu Lab, cutting them this way took a fraction of the time it did by hand.

Desktop printers in the design studio

3D printing has appeared on fashion runways for more than a decade, with Iris van Herpen among its earliest adopters. More recently, Jean Paul Gaultier’s Autumn/Winter 2026-27 haute couture collection featured parts produced by Sculpteo, and ANREALAGE showed 3D printed dresses in Paris as part of its Spring/Summer 2027 collection, SKIN.

In cases like these, production typically relies on industrial systems or specialist service providers. Susan Fang’s collection shows desktop machines taking on that role within a label’s own workflow, from footwear to lace and accessories. Her next stage is a literal one: she is designing costumes for a new opera production of M. Butterfly at La Monnaie / De Munt in Brussels, opening in April 2027.

Is 3D printing the future of fashion, or just a runway trend? Let us know in a comment below or on our LinkedIn or Facebook pages! Plus, don’t forget to sign up for our free weekly Newsletter to get the latest 3D printing news straight to your inbox. You can also find all our videos on our YouTube channel.

*Cover photo credits: left and right, Jason Lloyd-Evans; center, Bambu Lab and SUSAN FANG, design by Orelio De Jonghe