But that's just it - what are they paying for? They're not paying for jeans they make themselves, they're paying for bespoke products made for them by someone who knows jeans. Do you really want shoes that say "Pimp Daddy MK" on the soles? Or would you pay more for shoes that say "Klogs by Kardashian" or whatever-the-fuck?

(fully recognizing that both options are slightly less likely than monkeys flying out of my butt)

As #ecib points out, there's nothing preventing you from having wholly custom clothes right now. However, "wholly custom" is something that tends to fly in trade, not in fashion. Skateboarders? Custom decks are great. Fashionistas? They wear what their friends think is cool, and that tends to be brands crafted by experts, and experts know how to use the tools that are best for the job.

A 3dprinter, no matter how awesome it gets, will always be the lowest common denominator of fabrication.

See this?

http://i.imgur.com/A8HEI.jpg

That's a jack, about 6" across, that I sandcasted in college. It's garbage-grade aluminum - literally melted beer cans. It took me about 20 minutes to pour sand into the sandcaster, set the molds in, pound 'em flat and pour. It took another ten to get them out, cut them off the sprues and sneak this one into my bag because our shop instructor was a tool who wouldn't let us take our products home.

Now, the jack mold existed - it was one of many things I could have cast. In this example, 3d printing a jack would have replaced the mold, and that would be cool. But I only have to do that once. After that, I'm making 12 jacks an hour out of garbage aluminum and they're sitting out in my garden for a dozen years without any problems whatsoever. Suppose I want to go sintered aluminum, a process that, in theory, could be done with 3d printing. It's gonna take half an hour per jack to make one and it's going to cost an order of magnitude more than sandcasting. Meanwhile if sintered aluminum is how we wanna go, a sinter-casting machine (not sure what they cost, but pretty sure it's on the order of "a gajillion dollars") is going to make these things as fast as pennies in a mint.

How 'bout another example. See this?

http://i.imgur.com/Mqqn9.jpg

That's a tile replica from the Ennis House: http://www.ennishouse.org/ You might know it from Blade Runner, among other places: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/518/adfwallpaperbladeru...

Now - you could 3d print that. Wouldn't that be cool? Or, you could 3d print one, vacuuform it, and use it as a concrete mold:

http://www.wandrlust.net/2007/12/04/frank-lloyd-wright-dance...

Hell, you could 3d print one, vacuuform it, pour plaster, make a lot of them, then make entire sheets of the stuff and use it to line the inside of your reality TV show, like we did with something that shall remain nameless because apparently nobody on the internet knows we did it.

Here's the thing. I dig 3d printing. But I also dig sandcasting, forging, vacuuforming and other fab processes that are much better suited to the job. The reason 3d printing is big with geeks but not so big with everybody else is that 5 will get you 10 that for any given job, there already exists a better, cheaper, easier way to make it, presuming you want to make more than one. And most things, if it's worth making one it's worth making a dozen.