 An origami-inspired range of children’s clothing made from a durable pleated fabric that expands to fit growing babies and toddlers has won its 24-year-old designer a prestigious James Dyson award. Ryan Yasin devised the material using scientific principles he studied for his aeronautical engineering degree, after noting the lack of sustainability in the clothing industry and being frustrated by how quickly his baby niece and nephew outgrew garments he bought for them. It is made from distinctive pleated lightweight fabric which is waterproof, machine washable and recyclable, with all garments fitting the three-month to three-year age group. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ryan Yasin, designer of Petit Pli clothing range that grow with your child. “I had sent him some clothes, and by the time he got them, he had outgrown them.” 
 
 Yasin thought of creating garments that were dynamic, rather than static, and his engineering background led him to imagine clothes with what’s called a negative Poisson’s ratio. When stretched, materials that have this ratio – known as auxetics – become thicker and can expand in two directions at the same time. Yasin also said he’s in talks with a large UK retailer, and hopes to get his first shipments into UK stores in a matter of months. Yasin drew on his technical expertise to create Petit Pli, a line of children’s clothing made to expand six sizes to fit a child as it grows from six months to three years old. The James Dyson award operates in 23 countries, and is open to university level students and recent graduates studying product design, industrial design and engineering. One feature of good design is that it solves a problem, and anyone with children knows that the speed at which infants outgrow clothes is a problem.
– It's an age-old problem for parents: Shell out money for clothes that their young children quickly outgrow. Now, however, 24-year-old London designer Ryan Yasin has put his degree in aeronautical engineering to use to create origami-like pleated clothing designed to grow along with the kids, reports Quartz. The result has just won him a James Dyson Award for students in the UK. Yasin has already established a clothing line, Petit Pli, inspired by what he calls "deployed satellite panels" that can stretch outward in multiple directions. The lightweight fabric, which is waterproof and machine washable, is designed to stretch six sizes. Yasin's concept takes advantage of a principle known as auxetics already employed in stents and biomedical devices, reports the Guardian. So far, Yasin has developed more than 500 prototypes and says he'll use his $2,500 prize money to help start production, as he's in talks with a major UK retailer that might help him get the clothes on shelves in months. His main impetus, he says, was to cut down on the huge environmental waste linked to the making of clothes.