An imaginative idea from a London design student, Ryan Yasin, is being both celebrated and criticized. He has created clothes which grow to fit the child. Yasin, a master’s student in the Royal College of Art’s Innovation Design Engineering program, was inspired by the challenge of getting something to fit his growing nephew. He started experimenting and realized that by pleating synthetic fabric in a particular pattern, it was possible for a piece of clothing to stretch in both directions. He sewed a prototype pair of tiny pants–and formed the pleats by heating up the fabric around a special mold in his oven at home. The prototype worked: It fit both his baby nephew and his two-year-old niece. The concept is called Petit Pli kids clothing. Among criticism is the concern that the fabric looks wrinkled.
