This Clothing Range Grows at the Same Rate as Your Child

Petit Pli is a range of clothing that uses pleats to expand as your child grows. The hardwearing outerwear can grow with your child from 6 to 36 months.
Jessica Miley

Clothing designer Petit Pli thinks that kids are extreme athletes. So, they designed a range of clothing that not only can handle the rough and tumble of a child's life, but they patented a new type of material that ‘grows’ with your offspring. The waterproof shells use a pleated design that allows the fabric to grow bi-directionally encompassing seven sizes. This one garment could fit your child for the first two years of its life. The designers say the idea of creating expanding clothes ‘is a new way of approaching garment design, one suitable for high growth rates and discrepancies in children’s sizes.’ The garments are designed as outerwear over the top of ordinary clothing to provide a layer of waterproof clothing that lets children go into the world, and be the athletes that they are. The revolutionary garments look great and are also machine washable.

Petit Pli is designed by Royal College of Art graduate Ryan Mario Yasin. He was inspired to design the expandable clothing after buying clothes for his nephew which didn’t fit the growing child by the time they arrived in the mail. He hopes his range of clothing will help reduce the huge amounts of waste created by the fabric industry. He says: "Children outgrow their clothes in a matter of a few months, yet we clothe them in miniaturised adult clothing, as opposed to designing them from the ground up. With 11 million children in the UK, I thought it was time we redesigned children's garments."