Sonia Rykiel at Paris Fashion Week. Photo Credit: Splash News
By Ruchira Haldar
Sonia Rykiel opened her first boutique in Paris in May 1968, and changed the fashion world forever. Unlike most of her contemporaries, Rykiel had a keen understanding of the working woman and reflected this in her designs. She felt that women should use fashion to suit themselves and not the other way around. This unique style of thinking as well as her designs themselves endeared her to women the world over and even led to her creating the ensembles worn by Sarah Jessica Parker in the hit show “Sex and the City.” Rather than shock the consumer with garish designs or uncomfortable fabrics, Rykiel chooses what suits the modern woman. Just as Coco Chanel designed the quintessential suit, so Rykiel has put her mark on the knit sweater in every conceivable way. Her unique contributions to fashion include the inverted seam, the “no hem”, and the “no lining.”
Rykiel’s spring collection featured mostly dresses: the shirtdress, the minidress, one-shouldered dress, baby dolls in chiffon material, short trapeze dresses, and shifts constructed in duchesse satin. She chooses black, white, brown and several bright hues to illustrate her consummate use of color. Rykiel does her take on the LBD (little black dress) with patterns cut from mesh, and also offers us maillot swimwear in black with similar cutouts. Most of the dresses stopped mid-thigh, and yet the effect was subtle rather than dramatic. The dresses were as much about comfort as they were about style. The show was closed by a cascade of colored strapless dresses, each of which had a different expression of a woman’s face on them. As Newsweek magazine put it in 1976, “Buying Sonia Rykiel is like putting money in a Swiss bank.” An investment which stands the test of time.
Copyright © Sawf News Service. May not be reproduced without explicit written permission.