Sonia Rykiel, queen of post-’60s Paris chic, 86
PARIS — Sonia Rykiel, the influential French designer who helped shape the contemporary woman’s wardrobe, died on Thursday at the age of 86 after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease.
The pioneering Rykiel was a fixture in the industry for half a century, launching her own fashion house in 1968 buoyed by the Swinging Sixties craze in London and the emerging feminist movement across the globe.
Her sophisticated laid- back chic, iconic bright stripes, fluid fabrics and easy-to-wear yet feminine style came to typify a new generation of liberated women.
“It is a sad day but Sonia Rykiel leaves behind her an extraordinary legacy,” Jean-Marc Loubier, chairman and chief executive of First Heritage Brands, the parent company of the Sonia Rykiel label, told Reuters. “She was a pioneer who helped women and society evolve.”
“She invented not just a style but an attitude, a way of living and being, and offered a freedom of movement,” French President Francois Hollande said in a tribute.
The late Yves Saint-Laurent’s partner and co- founder of the label, Pierre Berge, lauded her as a self-made woman who “started with nothing to become one of the most important women in fashion.”
“She dressed active, modern women, she dressed Parisian women, she was the seamstress of the ‘Parisiennes,’” he added.
Known as the “Queen of Knitwear,” Rykiel made her breakthrough in 1962 with the so-called Poor Boy Sweater, a shorter skinny sweater for women with long sleeves.
The “Poor Boy” met resistance at first partly because of its bulky stitches.
‘NEW GENERATION’
But all that changed in December 1963 when Elle magazine featured 19-year-old French pop idol Francoise Hardy on its front cover in a skimpy striped redand-pink Rykiel number.
It became a sensation. Brigitte Bardot and fellow singer Sylvie Vartan were photographed in Rykiel sweaters and Audrey Hepburn herself went to the shop and snapped up five.
“She typified a new generation of designers who launched their own labels outside the established system of haute couture,” her official Web site said.
Rykiel founded her fashion house in 1968, when France was rocked by violent student riots, with the aim of creating a counter- culture to stiff, bourgeois dress codes with inside-out stitches and extra-short skirts.
Over the decades she branched out but always remained true to knitwear, using humble jerseys and cottons with fluid, innovative shapes.
She blurred the divide between day and evening wear, and always favored pants over skirts.
‘CHIC AND COOL’
Rykiel was born Sonia Flis in the upmarket Paris suburb of Neuilly on May 25, 1930 as the eldest of five daughters to a Romanian watchmaker father and a Russian mother.
She started out her career as a window dresser in a Parisian textile store at the age of 17, but had no formal training.
In 1954, she married a clothing boutique owner, Sam Rykiel, with whom she had two children and whom she later divorced.
She first publicly revealed she was suffering Parkinson’s in a 2012 book.
Within the French fashion industry, Rykiel will be remembered as a visionary who helped cement Paris and, in particular, the Left Bank, as the capital of couture.
She described her philosophy as “la Demode,” a contraction of “deconstruction” and “mode.”
In 2008, 30 of the world’s top designers paid tribute to the flame- haired knitwear queen at an exhibition marking her 40 years in the business, offering their own take on the Sonia Rykiel look.
“She abolished hemlines and linings, she invented knitwear, she made clothes that were reversible, she used layering,” Olivier Saillard, who curated the retrospective of her work, said at the time.
“She was chic and cool, very Left Bank,” said legendary French designer Jean- Charles de Castelbajac.
Jean Paul Gaultier, another lover of stripes, paid tribute to her “revolutionary” work for women, saying “Thank you for the inspiration and style.”
Rykiel played herself in Robert Altman’s 1994 satire Pret-a-Porter which was filmed during Paris fashion week, and wrote several books including a 2012 collaboration with journalist Judith Perrignon called Don’t forget that I am acting which discussed her life and her illness.
That year, her daughter Nathalie and her family sold control of the fashion label to First Heritage Brands, at the time called Fung Brands, an investment group backed by Hong Kong billionaires Victor and William Fung. The Asian group now also owns shoemaker Robert Clergerie and Belgian fine leather goods maker Delvaux.
The Rykiel family sold their remaining minority stake this year but Nathalie Rykiel still works as a consultant for the French fashion brand. —