Petit Pli is a material innovation and Fash-Tech startup that creates clothes that grow together with children. Imperial College London and Royal College of Art graduate and trained Aeronautical Engineer Ryan Mario Yasin founded London-based Petit Pli in 2017, at the age of 23, while he was still a Global Innovation Design Student, with the vision of designing innovative & sustainable garments for our world’s most extreme athletes: children.

His inspiration came from deployable nano-structure from satellites he worked on at Imperial, as well as his new-born nephew Viggo.

Children are extreme users of fashion, growing through 7 discrete sizes of clothing in their first two years. The design opportunity envisioned by Ryan was to embed to children’s clothing a material that expands bi-directionally to fit little ones aged between 9 months and 4 years. Petit Pli’s rainproof machine washable designs reduce waste, costs & pollution in childrenswear on account of designs being able to grow through 7 discrete sizes, streamlining the manufacturing process.

Combining design and engineering, Petit Pli adopted human centred design principles to draw upon prior research knowledge gained by Ryan at Imperial College London into origami & deployable structures for small cubesat satellites. After much R&D and product testing, Petit Pli’s rainproof, windproof outerwear suits are now available to order. 

Petit Pli’s designs also work to reduce inefficiencies for retailers with respect to inventory size requirements and stock management efficiency. 40% of all e-commerce fashion is returned back to the retailer, the largest pain point being in size-discrepancies. Petit Pli aims to mitigate this inefficiency too to the benefit of retailers and the environment.

Petit Pli contributes to making the fashion industry circular and reduces waste by:

Petit Pli is partnered with UAL’s Centre for Fashion Enterprise Pioneer Programme, of which Bethany Williams is a member. Along with this, Petit Pli has won 11 awards which include Fast Company’s 100 World Changing Ideas, 2019 Red Dot Product Design Award, 2017 UK James Dyson Award and recently beat Google for the 2018 Dezeen Award for Best Wearable Design.

Petit Pli has been working with NB Studio in London to develop a well thought-through brand identity and reusable, recyclable and gamified packaging.

To celebrate the launch of Forge Fashion, the new business support programme in Waltham Forest, Ryan was interviewed by Sarah Thirtle from Creative United UK. You can hear Ryan’s approach to how he grew his innovative brand here.

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