According to a report by Fast Company, the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT has developed a technology that provides a clever solution to the problems of mass customisation. The collaboration between Ministry of Supply and the Self-Assembly Lab approaches the problem from a different perspective: Their sweater, coming to stores within a few months, can be mass-produced in standard sizes. The customisation process happens in-store, instead of during the production process.

This smart sweater doesn’t need a battery, nor is it robotically knitted using metal thread or shape memory alloy, which would traditionally be used to make a material change its form. Instead, the fabric shrinks when exposed to heat, thanks to both the structure of the knit and the combination of materials used. The shape-shifting technology depends on the way that two different off-the-shelf materials interact together when they’re exposed to heat.

The Self-Assembly Lab developed the fabric through hundreds of experiments, combining different types of materials together and then trying out different knitting patterns to see how they would react to each other when exposed to heat. The research, which is part of a grant from the MIT-based non-profit organisation Advanced Functional Fabrics of America, was originally aimed at creating reversible transformations when it comes to shape and porosity, to make garments more breathable or waterproof based on temperature and moisture.