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Rethink 

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Business case

Producing textile and leather products and processing them into apparel and accessories

Fashion and Textiles

Impact on the ease of innovation, and facilitating uptake of innovations

Innovation

Minimise waste through diversion: Instead of sending waste to landfill, it is redirected into other industrial processes for handling, treatment, recycling, recovery, or reuse in various forms. 

Minimise waste through design: At the outset of a process of project, plan and design such that there is zero waste or minimal waste during production, use, and at end of life. 

Minimise Waste (SDG12)

Designing products to resist damage and wear, and serve a long and useful life.

Design for physical durability

Reduced use of virgin materials and/or an increase of the use of secondary and bio-based materials

Reduce Material Consumption (SDG12)

Selling high quality, long-lasting products

Sale of durable, long-lasting goods

Impacts

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Industries

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The principles of a circular economy concern designing out waste, regenerating ecosystems and keeping items in use. Decoupling the economy from material flows—improving the rate of resource productivity faster than the economic growth rate—is also a consistent guide. By evolving with the growing number of applications of circular economy principles, and consolidating these strategies across thematic areas, Circle Economy’s Key Elements Framework (KE) renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive contextual strategies and interventions. 


The Framework consists of:
- Core Elements: Activities directly handling product or material flows; and uniquely,
- Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.


Key elements of the circular economy

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Circle Economy's framework of strategies and activities that define the circular economy

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Based on the work of [Bocken et al. (2016)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309699661_Product_design_and_business_model_strategies_for_a_circular_economy), the Four Flows Framework serves as a simple framework for managing resource flows in a circular economy by using less (Narrow), using for longer (Slow), using again (Cycle), and using clean, regenerative materials and energy (Regenerate).

These different principles of circular economy can be applied to our socioeconomic metabolism: we can design stocks like buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and vehicles to be rich resource mines for the future, and design manufactured goods and consumables to be cycled and made regenerative. Furthermore, the focus must also centre on getting more value out of fewer materials. Achieving the aims of a circular economy—minimising material use, regenerating the Earth, and preventing material losses—can be done through these four key strategies mentioned above.

Source: Circle Economy. (2023). *[The circularity gap report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023)* (p.22). Amsterdam: Circle Economy. 

Four Flows Framework

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      By engineering clothes that grow using renewable energy & recycled materials we reduce ~69 kgCO2 per set. Since 2017, we've up-cycled approximately 12,841 PET bottles through our manufacturing process.LEARN MORE   
      Sir James Dyson   Dezeen Award Jury   Peter Bäckström - Innovation Lead at H&M   Red Dot Award   
    
  


United Kingdom

Petit Pli

Petit Pli is a wearable technology company, which was inspired by the constant changing of quickly growing children's wear, creating garments that are able to continuously adjust in size. Their garments grow up to 7 sizes – that’s 1 Petit Pli garment purchased in place of 7 traditional ones. Additionally, their product's design and production are also circularity centered, as they aim to eliminate waste before, during, and after use.

Size Adjustable Children's Clothing

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This collection has been built by a community of passionate researchers, students, and industry professionals as part of <a href="https://worldcirculartextilesday.com/" target="_blank">World Circular Textiles Day</a> (WCTD). 


World Circular Textiles Day takes place every year on 8th October. Our vision is to galvanise the collective ambitions and goals of people, organisations and businesses to reach a fully circular textiles world by 2050. Our mission is to provide a framework for circularity stakeholders to develop and deliver a collaborative, evolving roadmap and to chart circularity’s momentum annually from the 8th of October until 2050.

What does fully circular by 2050 mean?
- Shared textile resources, in the form of products and raw materials, are kept in **continual circulation**.
- Virgin resources are **replaced with circular materials**.
- Dignity, equity, and equality for the **people** involved in all parts of the circular value chain.

We need to know where we stand today to chart how to get to 100% Circularity by 2050. What circular activity is currently happening in the textiles and apparel industry, and where in the world is it happening? The WCTD Collection aims to answer this question by building the world’s largest digital library of circular textiles case studies. 

World Circular Textiles Day is proud to be supported by our 2022-23 Circular Hero Partners:
[Lenzing](https://www.lenzing.com/), [Texaid](https://retailsolutions.texaid.com/), [Bank & Vogue](https://www.bankvogue.com/), [Usha yarns limited](https://ushayarns.com/), [The Conduit](https://www.theconduit.com/), and [Asia Pacific Rayon](https://www.aprayon.com/en/)

## Want to contribute to the WCTD Collection? Sign up and add your circular textiles activities.

World Circular Textiles Day

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Starter Kit collection

Impact on increased knowledge and understanding as a result of the case study

Increase Awareness

Account for the systems perspective during the design process, to use the right materials, to design for appropriate lifetime and to design for extended future use

Design for the future

VISION:
Products and services are designed for multiple use and material value retention, with maximum positive impact.

DETAIL: 
Imagine a time when…products flow via optimal collection and distribution streams into reusable and repairable product platforms. Reuse and access models are dominant, and products are designed for multiple recirculation before biodegrading (if designed to do so), or being broken down into reusable raw materials for production. People only consume what they need. Production and consumption wastes have been fully eliminated and multifunctional, season-less and timeless fashions are the norm, yet still fulfil our human need for expression and creativity without constraint. All business models, organisations, governments and citizens play a role in maintaining a healthy, functioning circular ecosystem.

Products and Services

Slow strategies aim to keep materials in use for as long as possible, for example through design for durability and repairability. A more circular economy is also a slower one: materials, components, and products—and even buildings and infrastructure—that we lock in stocks are made to last. This will lower material demand in the long run, in essence also serving to narrow resource flows.

Slow

Designing to enable multiple uses and lifecycles of a product and its materials

Design for cyclability

Designing products with a single material type to more easily recycle them after use

Design for recycling - mono-materials

It is 2050.  Full systems change has taken place. This wouldn’t have been possible without the immediate action and radical steps taken from 2020 onwards. Many targets had to be identified in the early 2020s and achieved by 2030 to ensure that the 2050 goal happened in full. A sense of urgency, turbo stakeholder collaboration, supportive government regulation and clear, data driven targets enabled the mindsets and systems change needed to transform to a fully circular textiles ecosystem.

A circular economics model underpins what we have created. It reflects and supports a living organism made up of makers, users and restorers, interacting across vibrant and interconnected networks. Checks and balances, alongside transparency and accountability, ensure a healthy system. Financial, environmental, and social metrics have the purpose of serving communities and the planet. There is shared ownership of profit and loss – across all three metrics – throughout the value chain.

This is what we’ve achieved over the last 30 years:

WCTD Themes

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 Petit Pli is a material technology company comprised of a team of aeronautical engineers, neuroscientists & designers developing patented innovations in our studio in London, England. Our designs are only available through this website. 

          Petit Pli, a material innovation and fashion technology startup founded by Imperial graduate Ryan Yasin, designs clothes that grow with children. Petit Pli have been named as one of five 2019 H&M Foundation Global Change Award winners for their work using aerospace engineering to tackle waste and promote sustainability in the fashion industry. 
Growing with children
The team create clothes with a specially engineered fabric, which has a structure that allows it to expand bi-directionally. This means that a single garment is able to expand up to seven sizes – the number of sizes most children grow in their first two years of life. 
'Clothes that grow’ was designed to answer the needs of parents and children, retailers, manufacturers and the environment Ryan Mario Yasin Founder of Petit Pli
They hope to make the fashion industry more sustainable by reducing waste at production with fewer offcuts, through transportation by making fewer sizes, using recycled fabrics, keeping clothing in use for longer, and inspiring the next generation to rethink the value of clothes.
Petit Pli’s founder, Ryan Mario Yasin, studied Global Innovation Design, which is run jointly between Imperial’s Dyson School of Design Engineering and the Royal College of Art. Prior to this, Ryan studied Aeronautical Engineering at Imperial where he focused his master’s thesis on deployable nano-satellites.
To create the clothing, Ryan adopted design principles focused on human needs and drew upon the knowledge he gained during his Imperial studies. Nano-satellites require carbon fibre panels to pack away into miniscule gaps before being released into outer space. The structure for Petit Pli’s clothing was devised using a similar structure, bringing together design methodologies with engineering.
Nobel Prize of fashion
The Global Change Award has been dubbed the ‘Nobel Prize of Fashion’ and Petit Pli was chosen from 6,640 entries from 182 countries. The team received their award during a Grand Ceremony in Stockholm, the home of H&M’s headquarters, and are the first ever UK-based winner of the award.
Petit Pli will use their €150,000 prize money to scale production, grow the team and push their research and development to investigate new markets and unaddressed human needs. As winners they will also receive accelerator support.

The Petit Pli team with their award

Founder Ryan Mario Yasin said: “Petit Pli has gone from concept to a fully-fledged seed-funded startup, with an incredible like-minded and dedicated team, 100 units tested by families worldwide and a brilliant manufacturing base. This is a really proud moment for the team, and an opportunity that will allow us to reach further faster than we would have by our own means.
“Petit Pli places absolute focus on macro and micro needs of humanity – how can we improve people’s lives while placing a strong consideration on the sustainable and ethical implications. ‘Clothes that grow’ was designed to answer the needs of parents and children, retailers, manufacturers and the environment by offering the opportunity to make the sustainable option more desirable – and able to be implemented today.”
Whilst he was a student on the Global Innovation Design course, Ryan won the James Dyson Award for Petit Pli, an international design award that celebrates, encourages and inspires the next generation of design engineers.
Petit Pli’s rainproof, windproof outerwear suits are now available for pre-order. Image credits: Petit Pli 

   Petit Pli clothes Petit Pli  
A regular gripe of parents is the fact their children grow out of their clothes far too quickly. But Ryan Mario Yasin, the 26-year-old CEO and founder of Petit Pli, may have come up with the solution. Yasin’s company makes clothes that actually grow with the child through seven sizes, fitting kids between nine months and four years. He first patented the technology when he was 23 and a masters student on a global innovation design course at Imperial College London. “Petit Pli was brought to life to serve a need in the fashion industry,” Yasin says. “A need for innovation, a need for sustainability, a need for high ethical standards, and to serve its young users, they deserve something designed from the ground up for them, not miniaturized adult garments.” During Yasin’s studies he experienced “first hand” how his young niece and nephew’s speedy growth translated to a huge amount of garment waste.
“Soon after the experience, I learned that the fashion industry is the world’s second largest polluter,” he continues. “Creating Petit Pli was my answer to offering sustainability with enhanced performance, not trade-offs.”

   Ryan Mario Yasin of Petit Pli Petit Pli   Yasin focused on how to pack carbon fiber panels into tiny spaces, just a couple of millimeters wide, and how they could unfold into specific shapes once deployed.
“I began pitching for investment in September 2017,” recalls Yasin, “as a fresh graduate design engineer armed with passion, supportive friends & family, a competitive solution with the potential to disrupt the garment industry’s linear and destructive system and limited business experience.” For Yasin’s design solution to have a real-world impact, he realized his company needed to progress into a commercially viable business. To catalyze the transition and win investment, Yasin spent many nights getting to grips with the world of patents, trademarks and business models.    Ryan Mario Yasin of Petit Pli Petit Pli   “I believe that clothes are the most intimate product of our lives,” Yasin continues.  “Clothes guard us. They shield us from the perils of the natural world and allow us to enter environments our skin cannot provide protection for. 
“Despite our basic need for clothes we have lost respect & value for them, and the people that make them. We bury our clothes ahead of mending them — with serious environmental consequences.”
It’s estimated that each year around £140 million ($182 million) worth of clothing enters landfill. Unused clothing, meanwhile, is worth around £30 billion ($39 billion).
“These numbers are shocking,” says Yasin, “but suggest opportunity. An opportunity to design clothes that won’t endanger our future, encourage the adoption of slow consumption behaviors and reframe the value of a garment.”
   How the clothing expands Petit Pli  
Yasin says he believes the fashion industry is “ripe for reform” and that new designs can play a “pivotal role” in shaping consumer attitudes and driving consumer behavior.
He adds his ambitions lie “far beyond” childrenswear.
“Petit Pli will be an innovation catalyst for the next generation, and play a pivotal role in accelerating the move to a sustainable fashion industry.
“Clothes that grow are an innovation that we can implement to benefit individuals & humanity today.
“We aim to clothe the future of humanity, we are just starting with the next generation.”


         The fashion industry has a clear opportunity to act differently, pursuing profit and growth while creating new value for the world economy. This opportunity comes with an urgent need to place environmental, social, and ethical improvements on management’s agenda. In the past decade, the global fashion industry has been an engine for global development and has made progress on sustainability. Awareness of the need for continued improvement is growing, and individual companies are optimizing business practices to limit their negative impact. But to maintain its current growth trajectory, the fashion industry as a whole must address its environmental and social footprint. The earth’s natural resources are under pressure, and while the fashion industry is not the most obvious contributor to this stress, it is a considerable one. Moreover, social conditions in the fashion industry are far from those set forth in the United Nations’ goals for sustainable development. The need to act differently is clear. The good news is that by changing practices, the industry can simultaneously stop the negative impact, generate a high amount of value for society, and safeguard its long-term profitability. We estimate that the industry has the theoretical potential to create €160 billion in annual value for the world economy by 2030. Today the industry’s environmental and social pulse is weak. The newly developed global Pulse Score, a measure of sustainability for the industry, is only 32 out of 100.11
  Notes:  1 Developed by The Boston Consulting Group and Global Fashion Agenda, the Pulse Score is a global and holistic baseline for gauging sustainability performance in the fashion industry. Although based on the Sustainable Apparel Coalition’s proprietary Higg Index, the Pulse Score extends the Higg Index—the most extensive and representative existing measurement tool for the industry—by extrapolating that measure’s findings to include the entire industry. The Higg Index covers most large companies; the Pulse Score extends it to gain a view of underrepresented small to medium-size industry players. 

 Although many companies are making progress in optimizing business practices, the industry has a long way to go. If the fashion industry continues its present course of incremental improvement, it will likely see rising costs and regulation for materials, labor, and processing. Conservative projections indicate that fashion brands’ profitability levels are at risk of at least a 3-percentage-point drop if companies don’t act determinedly and soon. Matching what the industry leaders are doing is not enough. Even under optimistic and ambitious assumptions, a catch-up strategy will capture less than half of the €160 billion of potential 2030 value. The industry needs to consolidate and realign its efforts and resources toward high-impact levers, with fewer and stronger initiatives. To get there, it must promote new operating standards and boost innovation across companies, geographies, and supply chains. In bringing together participants at every stage of the value chain, fashion can ensure strong growth far into the future.The Case for Change Is Indisputable
Given current trends in population and GDP growth, The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Global Fashion Agenda (GFA) expect annual global apparel and footwear consumption to rise from 62 million tons to 102 million tons by 2030—a total that is the equivalent of 500 billion T-shirts. A number of planetary boundaries are already stretched, and this growth in fashion production will increase the environmental stress. In our report Pulse of the Fashion Industry 2017, we assess each major natural and social resource to project the fashion industry’s impact if it develops along current trajectories of production and consumption. If the industry manages to grow at the projected rate without producing a deteriorating environmental and social footprint, it may succeed in generating the total projected annual value of €160 billion—in human economic activity and in social and natural capital—for the world economy. Water is a key resource in fashion, both in cultivating the sources of natural fibers and in processing fabric. BCG and GFA project that the industry’s annual water consumption under current practices will rise by 50% by 2030—at which point the World Bank expects the global shortfall between demand and supply to reach 40%. If fashion can innovate and overhaul its practices in a way that keeps its water consumption constant, it will generate €32 billion in annual value for the world economy and protect itself from higher prices and supply disruption.Energy emissions, especially during the processing stages, represent an even bigger area for improvement. Already, the level of atmospheric CO2 is 20% beyond what is considered safe, and we expect fashion’s annual emissions to increase by 60% by 2030. Adopting measures that kept fashion’s emissions at 2015 levels would yield a €67 billion gain for the global economy.Chemicals are more challenging to track and assess. In fashion, relevant types include fertilizers, pesticides, dyes, and processing agents. Looking at occupational illnesses caused by carcinogens and airborne particles, we estimate an opportunity of €7 billion annually that could be achieved through advanced chemicals management.Waste constitutes a largely hidden opportunity. If the fashion industry continues its current practices, by 2030 its annual waste from production and consumer disposal will have increased by 60%. Today, only 20% of apparel is recycled at end of use, and most of that is downcycled into lower-value materials, as a consequence of inadequate technology. Assuming a linear production model, the industry could save society €4 billion per year by keeping the total amount of waste constant at 2015 levels. Far more savings are possible through closed-loop recycling.Wages are an immediate opportunity for betterment on the social side. In major textile manufacturing countries such as India, half of all workers are not paid the mandated minimum wage, which in many areas is well below a subsistence-level wage. The International Labour Organization reports on “extreme compliance” with minimum wages in the fashion industry, which it defines as 120% of what is legally required. If the industry were to keep the number of workers paid less than 120% of the legal requirement at its 2015 number while expanding its workforce to support the projected growth in volume, it would add €5 billion annually to the world economy through greater local consumption and private investment.22
  Notes:  2 We do not recommend viewing 120% of minimum wage as representative of a living wage. Rather, we use the 120% level to show the general insufficiency of minimum wages as a guide to the level of wages needed to make a living. The 120% level is also advantageous because of the data available in ILO reports on wage compliance. 

Health and safety are areas of great opportunity as well. The industry has already made strides in improving the working environment in processing and manufacturing. But annual recorded injuries are still likely to rise by about 15% by 2030, and each injury risks shortened life expectancy and diminished family support. If the industry could reduce the incidence of injury to near zero, society would reclaim €32 billion per year.Community engagement is often overlooked, but each euro spent by brands on local spending initiatives increases the return to society through multiplier effects. If the industry raised its community spending ratio from the current 0.2% of sales to 0.7% (the UN-recommended level for governments in wealthy countries), society would gain €14 billion annually by 2030. In addition to generating value for the world economy, such improvements would reduce the industry’s exposure to rising prices for scarce natural and human resources. Fashion brands' profitability levels are at stake if they do not take measures against likely price hikes in energy, labor, and other inputs. Their EBIT margin could fall by 3 percentage points, equal to €45 billion in monetary value, across the industry. (See Exhibit 1.) Hence the opportunity and the need for the industry to intensify and combine its efforts.             Variations in Performance
Not all fashion brands are equally responsible for the industry’s current status—and not all are equally equipped to reap the value opportunity outlined above. GFA and BCG developed the Pulse Score to assess the fashion industry’s performance on environmental and social issues across companies and stages of the value chain. It includes a survey of industry executives to confirm and refine the Sustainable Apparel Coalition’s quantitative Higg Index, thus permitting an extrapolation of its findings to the entire industry. Fashion’s overall Pulse Score is 32 out of 100, indicating the large opportunity for improvement. The disparity in performance on this measure from one fashion company to another is considerable. Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, sustainability is not a luxury that only premium-priced brands can afford. Company size, far more than price positioning, correlates with a higher Pulse Score. Nor is so-called fast fashion necessarily a threat to the environment and society: the high-street brands, typified by large entry prices, all achieve solid scores. The same is true for a few sustainability champions whose value propositions center on these concerns. (See Exhibit 2.) In contrast, small and midsize fashion brands (which collectively make up more than half of the industry) rate poorly. They constitute a massive blind spot and an opportunity: half the industry has done little to address these concerns and is not on track to do more.             European brands tend to score higher on environmental dimensions, while their US counterparts are more likely to follow social best practices. By type of ownership, family-owned firms perform better on these issues, while most (but not all) public companies tend to focus on maximizing short-term shareholder value. As for stages in the value chain, the beginning and end offer the most opportunity for improvement. (See Exhibit 3.) Design scores 22; raw materials, 17; use, 23; and end of use, 9. All of these areas typically get little attention from media, consumers, and even industry participants such as the designers.             At the middle stages, where the scores are higher on average (as the exhibit shows), the gaps in Pulse Score between the leaders and the following brands are large. On the transportation and manufacturing measures, the gap between the top and bottom quartiles is 45 and 50 points, respectively. Brands perform relatively well within health and safety, which are subject to media and regulatory scrutiny. The chemical area is another relative bright spot, with a Pulse Score of 37, owing to regulatory restrictions. Waste and water management, meanwhile, receive little attention and are both at 20. In areas where good technology for addressing problems already exists, large differences emerge: the gap between the top and bottom quartiles is 58 points in energy, whereas in waste it is only 12. Such gaps show that considerable improvement is possible using current technologies and practices. To bring all of the industry to the level of best practices visible today, a number of immediate actions are possible. But even if the entire industry caught up to the best-practice front-runners, the full €160 billion theoretically available cannot be captured. To move toward the level of improvement that the industry needs, it must undertake actions beyond what individual players can accomplish. The main challenges that it must meet in order to achieve this ambition are not individual commitment and action but leadership, collaboration, consolidation of resources, and innovation. In some instances, progress will become practical only in the aftermath of widespread industry adoption. It’s not enough for a few leading brands or sustainability champions to show proof of concept. The industry as a whole needs to demonstrate broad commitment and coordinated participation.The Landscape for Change
To realize the large opportunity for the world economy and to safeguard future profitability, the fashion industry needs to take two kinds of steps. The first kind involves pragmatic, concrete actions that are already economically viable—and that leading companies already practice, as shown in numerous proofs of concept. The second consists of two leaps forward: innovating on the basis of exciting developments now being explored in research centers and test facilities, and collaborating to drive change throughout the industry faster and with more impact. To guide this work, the report presents a landscape for change that will support smart growth for the industry. The landscape for change lays out a series of goals, each of which combines immediate actions with disruptive actions that depend on innovation and collaboration. In terms of environmental changes, the following goals should be pursued: Closed-Loop Recycling. No value leakage; aim instead for measures such as one garment recycled for every garment produced.Sustainable Material Mix. For example, 100% sustainable fibers with a low footprint, to replace conventional cotton.Reduced Energy Footprint. Minimized energy consumption and 100% carbon neutrality.Chemical and Water Optimization. No hazardous chemicals and no water pollution.Production to Demand. No overproduction.  Social goals include:Rebalanced Industry Economics. Fair and equal pay and skill development for all workers.Health and Safety Excellence. 100%-safe workplaces fostering well-being and good morale.Advocacy of Human Rights. No human rights abuses and full rights advocacy.  Overarching goals include:Transparency and Traceability. Full visibility on all tiers’ supplier performance and conditionsConsumer Engagement. Complete customer information on a garment’s life-cycle impact, environmentally and sociallyNovel Business Models. Full utilization of purchased fashion products Moving toward these goals will help achieve the €160 billion annual opportunity for the world economy. In contrast, staying on the current path will put the industry at risk of significantly higher costs. Assessments of business cases involving sustainability measures, along with a multitude of proofs of concepts, show that improving a fashion brand’s impact need not jeopardize profitability—and this is true without any calculation of the positive effect of such upgraded processes on risk management and brand building. For example, calculating the business case for energy efficiency reveals an improvement potential of about 1 percentage point EBIT.A Call for Collaboration
The landscape for change is bold and ambitious, going well beyond what individual players have accomplished thus far and can accomplish going forward. The main challenge to achieve this ambition is not individual commitment and actions but leadership, collaboration, and innovation. How can the industry manage the collective effort to develop new solutions and scale promising technologies to commercial viability? Many of these ideas will become practical only with widespread adoption. It’s not enough for a few leading brands or sustainability champions to show proof of concept. We need the broad commitment and coordinated participation of the industry as a whole. With help from industry associations, consumers, and regulators, fashion can achieve the vision of a better industry. The Regulator as Amplifier. Until now, aside from minimum wages and chemicals, fashion has faced little regulatory intervention. But this could change—and change suddenly—if public opinion begins to blame the industry for sustainability shortfalls. It is far better for the industry to take the lead and favorably steer the needed changes. Doing so would not only preempt unilateral restrictions, it could prompt supportive regulation that reinforces sustainability targets and incentivizes change. The Consumer with the Power to Tip the Scales. Studies show that consumers are far more sensitive to environmental, social, and ethical concerns today than in previous decades. Farsighted fashion brands can join forces with consumers in a long-term push for better practices and transparency in the value chain. And through education, information, and incentives, consumers can gradually change their fashion consumption habits to reduce their own footprint. Collaboration and Innovation Needed on an Unprecedented Scale. Individual brands, retailers, and stakeholder initiatives have shown impressive commitment and have achieved great progress. Best practices are available across all segments of the industry, and substantial innovations are emerging. Applying and implementing these advances will do much to improve the industry’s impact. But these alone are not enough. A collective effort with critical mass would enable the industry to make progress on major goals, such as establishing a unified standard for recycling. An effort of this type would require a unified agenda with clear goals. It would be led by the large industry brands, which are ahead of the game with regard to environmental and social issues. The key is to set up an ecosystem that encourages all parts of the industry to collaborate on the major issues. Multiple-stakeholder initiatives, acting beyond commercial interests, can offer guidance and promote cohesion. But today’s scattered, fragmented array of initiatives, memberships, certifications, and so on can be confusing for brands, suppliers, innovators, and donors. Consolidation is inevitable as a means to focus time, energy, and money.   United around an agenda for change, the fashion industry can drive the needed systemic change and work jointly on disruptive innovation. As promising ideas emerge, companies can support pilot programs and then quickly scale them up to commercial viability. Such collective investments would drive down costs and enable the magnitudes necessary to move the needle—as can be seen in other industries where such practices are common. Since its beginning—and certainly since the development of mass markets—the fashion industry has had its eye on the clothing lines to be launched next season. In the context of a world timed by seasons altered already by the heavy hand of humankind, the industry must now look still further forward.          Boston Consulting Group partners with leaders in business and society to tackle their most important challenges and capture their greatest opportunities. BCG was the pioneer in business strategy when it was founded in 1963. Today, we work closely with clients to embrace a transformational approach aimed at benefiting all stakeholders—empowering organizations to grow, build sustainable competitive advantage, and drive positive societal impact.  Our diverse, global teams bring deep industry and functional expertise and a range of perspectives that question the status quo and spark change. BCG delivers solutions through leading-edge management consulting, technology and design, and corporate and digital ventures. We work in a uniquely collaborative model across the firm and throughout all levels of the client organization, fueled by the goal of helping our clients thrive and enabling them to make the world a better place.    © Boston Consulting Group 2022. All rights reserved.  For information or permission to reprint, please contact BCG at permissions@bcg.com. To find the latest BCG content and register to receive e-alerts on this topic or others, please visit bcg.com. Follow Boston Consulting Group on Facebook and Twitter.    
     

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Petit Pli is a wearable technology company that proposes a new approach to garment design while addressing problems in the textile industry focused on the macro and micro needs of humanity. The London-based startup was founded in 2017 by trained aeronautical engineer Ryan Mario Yasin. During his studies, he experienced how his young niece and nephew’s speedy growth translated into a huge amount of garment waste, a signal that brought him an opportunity to enroll in a journey of discovery towards a sustainable transformation project based on a continuous size adjustment technology.The concept of Petit Pli is built upon using materials sustainably. It reduces waste by combining human-centered design methodologies with aerospace engineering techniques to create innovative garments that grow as the wearer ages. Ryan Mario Yasin, inspired by satellite folding structures and origami, worked together with his interdisciplinary team to develop a structure that expands bi-directionally to fit kids between 9 months and 4 years of age. Made from a mono-fiber polyester structure, the collection features ultra-lightweight, rainproof outerwear garments which are perfectly adapted to children’s freedom of movement.Petit Pli is an agile force of interdisciplinary design engineers, fashion designers, neuroscientists, and sociologists; a wearable technology company that does not fit anymore into the current parameters of today’s fashion labels.