Raven Smith x Petit Pli: Little Fish, a print that started in the bath

PETIT PLI X RAVEN SMITH · LITTLE FISH: PRINT 20

Raven Smith writes about taste for a living. He is a London-based Vogue columnist and the author of Trivial Pursuits and Men, and lately his writing has turned to fatherhood and the unexpected things that come with becoming a dad.

He had come across Petit Pli before, but wasn't convinced it actually worked. So he tested one first, a second-hand piece for his daughter that he found on Vinted. The rest is history.

The future belongs to the curious, and inspiration can come from any corner. For Raven, it came from the bath.

We spent a day with Raven and his daughter, Tibbs, at Fish Planet in Shoreditch. She had only started walking the week before. "Can you see the fishes?" Raven asked Tibbs at every tank.

How the fish arrived

It began with a family trip to the aquarium. "She was just completely besotted with all the fish," Raven told us. "First Christmas present: a tank, a tropical tank and five fish. She's been captivated by it ever since."

Raven puts it in a way that makes perfect sense. "It's like watching TV, but there's no script," he says. "I find it very therapeutic to watch." We think that's a little bit like watching a LittleHuman too. For a baby, he thinks it comes down to colour. "They're quite contrasty colours, but bright. It's just crazy how much she lights up. When she's looking at fish, she's like a different kid."

He has written about this in Vogue, too: "You quickly come to understand that life is not a narrative; it is a sequence of fleeting fascinations." For Tibbs, fish are one of the big ones.

His own favourite is the one with the red head. "It's just a bit off. I feel like it's misunderstood."

The lucky dip

Raven felt the weight of the brief straight away. "I felt a lot of pressure designing a print, because it lasts forever," he says. "I wanted people to like it, but I also wanted to like it myself, and for it to have a personal story."

The story turned up at bath time. Tibbs's bath came from B&Q, which makes it in five colours and sends whichever one it likes. "It's just like a lucky dip. And they sent a pink one, which I wouldn't get for a girl, because it's a little bit on the nose... We have this goldfish toy from years ago, and they go together like peas and carrots. That is exactly the print on the pink [dungaree]. And in my bathroom is the green of the dungarees."

"Bath time is really special for us. She loves the water, she loves the fish. So it all just ties together really nicely in this print."

That is Little Fish. Two colourways, Lime and Pink: the bathroom wall and the lucky dip bathtub. We liked the idea of taking something so specific to one LittleHuman and making it for many more. As the garment expands, the pleats shift the pattern, so the fish move as the child wearing them grows.

Built to last

As a parent, Raven had already noticed how fast clothes come and go. "Babies go through such a high volume of clothing, because they grow so fast. Having something she's been wearing for six months, eight months, a year, it doesn't feel like a waste."

As he put it in Vogue: "Babies change so rapidly, you're always saying small goodbyes to a baby you've just gotten used to." Clothes that grow mean fewer of those goodbyes happen in the wardrobe.

"I don't have to think too much about buying, because it grows with her. I don't feel like I'm buying something for a short period of time."

He is practical about what she wears, too. "I like dresses, and I think they look nice. But when I watch her, she finds it easier to play in trousers. In trousers she doesn't even notice them."

And on the bigger picture: "I just think it's important to make stuff that's built to last. I hope the trend of taste, of fashion and of design is moving towards things that last a long time."

On taste

We asked how he approaches a project like this. "I always just feel like you should write the most true thing you can think of."

Then came the line we have not stopped repeating since. "I just think we should appreciate the fact that it's adults with taste buying clothes for kids who look like they have taste."

You don't need to be a fish person to get it, either. "I don't think you have to love tropical fish to know that this is a good print, a fun print to go out and about in."

The man with 34 tanks

A word for our host, Dan Murroni, who runs Fish Planet. Before he had a shop, he kept his fish at home. "In my fish room, I had 34 tanks." People started asking whether he would sell them, and he thought, "Maybe I need to quit my job and do something like that." The shop we visited had been open about eight months. There is another in Finsbury Park.

Planning a fishy day out of your own? Find more family days out in London on Little Atlas, our app for LittleHumans and the grown-ups who take them places.

By the end of the day, shoes were off and the dungarees were still on. Which, as someone pointed out, is the important bit.

Little Fish, by Raven Smith

Little Fish launches on Saturday 7 November at 3pm GMT, on the Versatile Dungarees in Lime and Pink, in TinyHuman, MiniHuman and LittleHuman sizes, from £110. There are 100 pieces.

For more of Raven on becoming a dad, read his Vogue column, 10 Things I've Learned in My First Year of Fatherhood.