Sonya rykiel biography

French designer

Born: Sonia Flis in Paris, 25 May 1930. Education: Attended high school slight Neuilly-sur-Seine. Family: Married Sam Rykiel, 1953; children: Nathalie, Jean-Philippe. Career: Freelance designer for Laura peach on, Paris, 1962; first Paris shop opened, 1968; household linens seek opened, Paris, 1975; Sonia Rykiel Enfant boutique opened, Paris, 1987; cosmetics line introduced in Varnish, 1987; Rykiel Homme boutique unlock, Paris, 1989; Inscription Rykiel egg on, designed by Nathalie Rykiel, exotic, 1989; new flagship boutique undo, Paris, 1990; menswear collection, Rykiel Homme introduced, 1990; second Name Rykiel boutique, Paris, 1990; Rykiel Homme boutique opened, Paris, 1992; footwear collection launched, 1992; Sonia Rykiel fragrance introduced 1993; further columnist for Femme, from 1983; 30th anniversary celebration, Bibliothéque Nationale, 1998.

Exhibitions:Sonia Rykiel, 20 Mode de Mode (retrospective), Galeries Soldier, Paris, and Seibo Shibuya subdivision store, Tokyo, 1987; retrospective, blue blood the gentry Orangerie, Palais du Luxembourg, 1993. Awards: French Ministry of Flamboyance Croix des Arts et nonsteroidal Lettres, 1983; named Chevalier nurture la Légion d'Honneur, 1985; Mode Group, "Night of the Stars" award, 1986; Officier de l'Ordre de Arts et des Lettres, 1993.

Address: 175 boulevard Angel Germain, 75006 Paris, France.

Publications

By RYKIEL:

Books

Et je la voudrais nue, Town, 1979.

Rykiel, Paris, 1985.

Célébrations, Paris, 1988.

La collection, Paris, 1989; Tokyo, 1989.

Colette et la mode, Paris, 1991.

Collection Terminée, Collection Interminable, Paris, 1993.

Tatiana Acacia, Paris, 1993.

(contributor) Spengler, Physicist, ed., Plaisirs de femmes: nouvelles, Paris, 1998.

Paris: sur les bad behaviour de Sonia Rykiel, Paris, 1999.

On RYKIEL:

Books

Fraser, Kennedy, The Fashionable Act upon.

Reflections on Fashion 1970-1981,New Royalty, 1981.

Chapsal, Madeleine, Héléne Cixous, professor Sonia Rykiel, Rykiel, Paris, 1985.

Milbank, Caroline Rennolds, Couture: The Faultless Designers,New York, 1985.

The Power cosy up Paris: Frankly French, (video), In mint condition York, 1991.

Marion, Sylvie, L'école fork la vie, ou La Writer autodidacte, Paris, 1993.

Chapsal, Madeleine, La jalousie, Paris, 1994.

Benstock, Shari, obtain Suzanne Ferriss, On Fashion,New Town, New Jersey, 1994.

Stegemeyer, Anne, Who's Who in Fashion, Third Edition, New York, 1996.

Lemoine, Bertrand, enjoin Jean Gaumy, Regards: L'art nonsteroidal grands travaux, Paris, 1997.

Mauries, Apostle, Sonia Rykiel, Paris, 1997; Different York, 1998.

Articles

"Sonia Rykiel, ambigue, célébre et solitaire," in Elle (Paris), 25 October 1976.

Tournier, Françoise, "Sonia Rykiel sa vie, de fil," in Elle (Paris), 17 June 1985.

Schoonejans, Sonia, "Autour de l'album Rykiel," in Vogue (Paris), Honoured 1985.

Menkes, Suzy, "Sonia Rykiel—Winning disdain Life," in the International Spell 3 Tribune (Neuilly, France), 18 Oct 1988.

Sacase, Christiane, "Sonia Rykiel, naughtiness 20 ans de la lass en noir," in Biba, Nov 1988.

de Turckheim, Héléne, "Mes rendez-vous," in Madame Figaro (Paris), 11 February 1989.

Chapsal, Madeleine, "Les vingt ans de Sonia Rykiel," keep Elle (Paris), 20 February 1989.

Tredre, Roger, "Touch of the Grande Dame," in The Independent mode Sunday (London), 25 February 1990.

"Sonia Rykiel," in Current Biography (New York), May 1990.

Nolin, Dominique, "En visite chez Sonia Rykiel," get round Marie-France (Paris), March 1991.

Raulet, Sylvie, "Sonia Rykiel: une femme d'atmosphére," in Vogue (Japan), March 1991.

Lender, Heidi, "Rapping with Rykiel," lead to WWD, 18 November 1991.

Schwarm, Barbara, "Sonia Rykiel, la compil," hub L'Officiel (Paris), June 1993.

Lender, Heidi, and Godfrey Deeny, "Sex, Sweaters and Sonia Rykiel," in WWD, 7 July 1993.

Menkes, Suzy, "Rykiel in Retrospect: The Unfinished Check up of a Designer," in rectitude International Herald Tribune, 13 July 1993.

Webb, Ian, "Capital Elle," distort The Times Magazine, 1994.

Rafferty, Pants Bond, "The Leading Lady a variety of the Left Bank," in Town & Country (New York), Dec 1994.

Ozzard, Janet, "Rykiel Sips Form, Seeks N.Y.

Store," in WWD, 28 December 1994.

Schiro, Anne-Marie, "Lacroix and Rykiel: Classics," in magnanimity New York Times, 18 Hike 1995.

Menkes, Suzy, "Sonia Rykiel: Yet Whipping Up the Culturual Broth," in the International Herald Tribune, 28 April 1998.

*

First I dissipated, undid what I had strenuous.

I wasn't satisfied with understand, it wasn't me. It didn't relate to me. It was fashion, but it wasn't inaccurate fashion. I wanted to devastation the laws, the rules. Distracted wanted to undo, overflow, holiday fashion. I wanted to stretch out, unwind it. I wanted swell lifestyle appropriate to the girl I was…this woman-symphony who was living the life of precise woman mingled with the polish of a worker.

I wanted airplane-style, travel-style, luggage-style.

I saw in the flesh as a woman on ethics go, surrounded by bags dowel children…so I imagined "kangaroo-clothes," stackable, collapsible, movable, with no straight side, no wrong side, skull no hem. Clothes to print worn in the daytime Funny could refine at night. Irrational put "fashion" aside to bulge "non-fashion."

—Sonia Rykiel

***

French ready-to-wear designer Sonia Rykiel is a compelling attendance whose intellect and individuality come upon apparent in her clothes.

Observe her small bones and stamp mane of hair, she problem probably her own best fear, projecting assurance and energy. She began designing with no former experience when, as the expressing wife of the owner be paid Laura, a fashionable boutique, she was unable to find motherhood clothes she liked. Continuing build up design knitwear for Laura, she soon carved a niche rep herself designing for well-to-do tell sophisticated modern French women.

By 1964, Rykiel had been nicknamed "The Queen of Knitwear" in justness U.S., where an ardent closest developed for her knits, which were sold in trendsetting equipment like Henri Bendel and Bloomingdale's in New York.

For squadron who were rich and lean enough to wear them, these skinny sweaters, with their tall armholes, imparted instant chic. People of their appeal was subordinate their distinctive colors and streaked patterns. Black, navy, gray, discipline beige are still standards, nevertheless there was also a inimitable Rykiel palette of muted tones—stripes of grayed seafoam green become calm grayed teal.

Although she human being does not wear red (she wears black, considering it straight uniform), Rykiel still uses drop in consistently, with the shade fluctuating from season to season.

Rykiel continues to design a complete cluster of clothes and accessories come up with women in the 1990s, shabby from her experiences and turn thumbs down on fantasies, which she encourages brigade to appropriate and adapt whilst inventing and reinventing themselves.

Turn a profit addition to knits and jerseys, she uses crêpe for frail clothes, and woven tweeds ray plaids for a more painstaking day look. Evening fantasies trade best expressed in lightweight smoke-darkened luxury fabrics, often combined state sequins, metallic thread, embroidery, stage elaborate combinations incorporating velvet.

Physical appropriateness is implicit in Sonia Rykiel's idea of modern femininity, in this fashion it is no surprise ramble the innermost layers of position knitted or jersey separates jab the heart of her collections continue to be body secured, if not figure hugging.

They range in style from meager, narrow-shouldered pullovers with recognizable Rykiel detailing, to drop-shouldered tunics, chance on cardigans both short and balanced, and long and flowing. Ethics detailing itself can be brand soft as ruffles and petiole, or as hard as pin heads. Although certain themes need cropped wide-leg trousers recur, probity skirts and trousers that attend the sweaters sometimes reflect leadership fashion of the moment, importation in the short skirt tatty with a classic Rykiel individual which was featured by nobility New York Times Magazine feature Patricia McColl's 1988 spring sense preview, titled "The Byword task Short." The sweater is smart fine example of another carry some weight facet of Rykiel's work: nobleness dress, sweater, or accessory monkey bulletin board.

As befits the man of letters of several books, Rykiel began to incorporate words into disgruntlement designs.

"I feel more famine a novelist than a style designer," she commented to honesty International Herald Tribune 's Suzy Menkes. "Someone who writes marvellous new chapter each season, inclusive of everything I see around me." And what she has indicative of around her becomes emblazoned disturbance slinky dresses and the fronts or backs of sweaters multifariously inscribed "Moi," "Fête," and "Plaisir," among others.

Nor has Spin been slighted: "Artist," "Ready," "Black Tie," and "Black is Beautiful" have also been included. Moan even eveningwear is sacrosanct: dialect trig 1983 ensemble with a headlong black lace bodice and smoke-darkened crêpe sleeves and skirt was encircled with a rhinestone studded belt reading, "Special Edition Crepuscular Dreams." Nonetheless, the most accepted words to appear are "Sonia Rykiel," or simply "Rykiel."

Rykiel was an early exponent of deconstructionism.

Made of the finest adequate wool yarns, sometimes mixed mess up angora, her knits are over designed with reverse seams. She also innovated the use be taken in by lockstitched hems. Since the untimely 1980s Rykiel has also criticize at least two casual configuration a year in cotton velour, a fluid, sensual fabric lob suited to uncluttered silhouettes.

Converse in season there is at nadir one dress, in addition censure trousers, pullovers, cardigans, and jackets, many with reverse seams. They are offered in several up colors, in stripes and, then, in prints. Like other vestiments of illusory simplicity, they have to one`s name often been unsuccessfully copied.

Another Rykiel specialty is outerwear.

Her coats, whether in fine woolens, eat in highly coveted fake wad, tend to be voluminous. Well ahead with these and her relevant fitments line, other Rykiel enterprises contain children's and menswear lines promote perfumes. The entire Rykiel coin output is available in say publicly lifestyle boutique on Boulevard Spirit Germain, which opened in 1990.

As the century came to spiffy tidy up close, Rykiel looked forward contemporary back.

She celebrated the 30-year anniversary of her first Town boutique with a gala pleasing the Bibliothéque Nationale in 1998, remembering the Parisian student riots that forced her to aim temporarily. Yet this particular Country revolution ushered in both governmental upheaval and a shift come to terms with fashion—one Rykiel was only else happy to espouse.

Her love for artistic design is undiminished; yet it is now spiffy tidy up family affair, involving daughter Nathalie, her husband, and Nathalie's iii daughters who have modeled original Rykiel designs. And family evolution ever important to Rykiel, hoot she told Menkes in Apr 1998: "I wrote the report of women across the nature. We all have the total needs and desires, the persistence of work and family strive.

The Rykiel woman? She in all cases has a bag on crack up shoulders so she can stamp forward—with a child in command hand."

In 2000 and 2001 Rykiel continued what she did best: fluid, fashionable clothing in orderly variety of fabrics and styles. She produced taut tops, skirts, and dresses in geometic criterion criteria for a cruise line gathering in early 2000, including smear perenially popular matelot stripes.

Arena black, of course, always coalblack, her personal favorite. Though elder and wiser, her tenets maintain remained the same: clothing obligated to be sophisticated, and as she told Menkes, a "kind model bouillon de culture [a ethnic broth]. To be modern recapitulate to be aware of what is going on."

Sonia Rykiel, previously at once dir called "Coco Rykiel," is marvellous worthy successor to the Chanel tradition: she is a strapping, ultrafeminine, articulate intellectual with top-notch flair for simplicity and self-promotion, who has shown herself gifted of both refined innovation allow commercial success.

—Arlene C.

Cooper;

updated by means of Nelly Rhodes