Sonia Rykiel
Knowing yourself, and learning to love yourself as you are, is the beginning of beauty. I think the most important thing is to show off what's most beautiful about you and to hide what's less beautiful.Collection: Learning
With only one bag, you can change your outfit completely.Collection: Change
How can you live the high life if you do not wear high heels? I don't understand why women wear these ballet pumps. They are only good if you walk like a ballet dancer, and only ballet dancers do that.Collection: Women
I think in the darkest moments, we need a break.
The key to my collections is sensuality.
Like Picasso, I go through blue periods, green periods, or grey periods.
You can have a conversation with your eyes.
I hate the word 'feminine!' I mean, there is a woman and a man, and when I say 'woman,' it suggests all that is radiant, tender, fascinating, gentle, demoniac, exaggerated! 'Feminine' makes me think of somebody who is spindly and over-sweet - I don't like that!
The Rykiel woman? She doesn't have time to stop time. She's too busy running. In her hands she's carrying a tote, a baby, a book, a camera.
Fashion should be a kind of bouillon de culture.
I have no regrets in life, and you know what? If I could, I'd go back and do it all again.
My breakfast is very important.
I invented a sweater so small, so close to the body, that Women's Wear Daily nicknamed it 'The Poor Boy Sweater' and consecrated me queen of knitwear.
My shows are about the complete woman who swallows it all. It's a question of survival.
It's useless to send models out on the runway to cry.
You have to be luxurious nude. It's difficult to move in the nude in front of a mirror. It's much easier to move when you're dressed. But if you can walk around in the nude easily in front of your man, if you can be luxurious in the nude, then you've really got it.
First I made a dress because I was pregnant and I wanted to be the most beautiful pregnant woman. Then I made a sweater because I wanted to have one that wasn't like anyone else's.
People said making clothes inside out was not proper. I disagreed, because clothes that are inside out are as beautiful as a cathedral.
Being one step ahead of a fashion trend is not so important to me. What matters is to always forge ahead.
I love chocolate. Black chocolate with marshmallow inside, caramel inside. If I could only have two foods, I'd take some fantastic chocolate. And some terrible chocolate. I love the Clark Bar.
At hotels, you are an actress. Absolutely. You can do what you want. Go where you want. I love my home too. But I love to arrive in a hotel. They have books, chocolate, food. I put things in the little refrigerator.
I am what I am. Before I was not so proud to make fashion. My family thought fashion wasn't very interesting. So I hid that.
What pushes me forward is everything I have learned: political, social, cultural. I put all that into the clothes.
To be modern is to be aware of what is going on.
I was supposed to be a mother like my mother, who didn't work.
I wanted a maternity dress, but I couldn't find anything I liked. Everything was abominable. So I made one. Then I made a pullover. 'Elle' put it on the cover. Then WWD elected me the Queen of Knitwear.
Since I didn't know anything, I did everything I wanted.
I didn't listen to anyone. I was so violent, so authoritarian, only listening to what I wanted and myself.
I don't want to show my pain. I resisted; I hesitated. I tried to be invisible, to pretend that nothing was wrong. It's impossible; it's not like me.
I always believe in pants. You can play with your legs, your attitude, with pants. It's much more funny. It's much more sophisticated. It's much more arrogant, like a man with feminine attitude. I love pants.
When a woman confuses what she is with what she wears, then something is wrong inside.
I don't think that clothes have anything to do with the personality. That comes from the woman herself.
My fashion has no time, no season. It doesn't go out of style. If someone decides that clothes can go out of fashion, then you are deciding a woman can go out of fashion.
I want women to learn to find themselves.
Wherever I go, I buy shoes.
It is interesting to see what other designers do, and not work in a vacuum.
Women often stop me in the street.
My only ambition was to have 10 children. Fashion was an accident.
We are working women. Also, we have the problem of children, of men, to take care of our houses, so many things. I try to explain that in my clothes. They are clothes for everyday life. That is the real life of woman.
I have the impression that the women around me are like me - smaller, taller, fatter, thinner - but in fact, we are all the same.
My color is black. And black, if it's worn right, is a scandal.
I never played a part in the feminist movement - it touches me, but I am not a militant.
To me, the biggest revolution of the 20th century was the pill.
The pill was the liberation of the spirit of women.
Artifice is art.
A woman and a dress, very often, fight against each other because they are not at the same place. Sometimes you see the woman moving the belt around. She is making the robe her own. She needs that. Otherwise, the dress doesn't exist.
A dress will never make a woman sexy, fatale, magnificent, mysterious. It's a way of walking, of standing, or existing, the way you give your hand or your regard. That's what makes the dress.
Women should look at themselves and decide for themselves what color or length they should wear.
I've never been interested in dressing one woman. What's interested me was to have a philosophy. It hasn't been important to put a woman in a blue dress. I wanted to dress women who wanted to look at themselves. To stand out. To be women who were not part of the crowd. A woman who fights and advances.
Paris was a melting pot.