Sonia Rykiel Quotes - Page 2

Design job fell on me. I didn't want to do it. It was an accident. For the first 10 years I said, "Tomorrow I'm stopping."

In my family, Fashion was something we never talked about, it was thought of as kind of superficial.

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!

People said making clothes inside out was not proper. I disagreed because clothes that are inside out are as beautiful as a cathedral.

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 can be happy with something I did, like a drawing or a dress I designed, and yet be very disappointed with the same drawing, or the same dress the day after.

I married a man who was in fashion. I began to work when my daughter Nathalie was about eight or 10 years old. Then one day I began to make a sweater, and eventually the sweater was on the front page of Elle magazine. And the day after I was the queen of knit in America.

I will be working on the collection until the day before the show! It's an endless process, that's all that I can say at that stage.

The fashion industry is a free world, with creative codes that can be hardly considered sometimes, but it's also up to women to create their own style, and own trend.

I couldn't have opened a store without putting books with the clothes. I am still writing as I have always done, and have published my ninth book "L'envers à l'endroit" last year. I am currently working on a dictionary of my favourite words.

It's important to know yourself well, in order to create your own style of fashion to suit your own body shape.

For me, luxury isn't just the real thing. It's also fake. Swarovski crystals or real diamonds? It's a game. You have to be luxurious nude.

I have to say that the identity of a fashion designer is international today.

It is a very important matter, as a woman, to juggle everything... Your professional life, family, children etc.

My shows are about the complete woman who swallows it all. It's a question of survival.

As a young girl I was a real tomboy, only listening to myself. I carried on with this attitude even as a woman and when I first launched the Sonia Rykiel line, and said to women to remove their bras or when I designed sweaters with stitches inside out, everybody said to me that it was crazy and risky, but I ignored what they said and I did what I felt was right at the time.

I am like the lover of Roland Barthes "who's always running in his head". I'm always searching, and "eating" everything from my life, in order to put it in my dresses!

It's useless to send models out on the runway to cry.

As a slave [to fashion], I can be very dramatic and very demanding of myself and of the people I work with.

The key to my collections is sensuality.

Fashion is also a form of art, and like every kind of art, it has its own way of expression. In other words, if a dress looks better on a thin girl, on a catwalk, during a very specific moment of time and space then it's represented as part of a "fashion Show". It is after all a "Show" and it has to be understood by people that it is a "show" and not real life.

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.

I always have a lot of vents and slits in the clothes I design, even inside the pockets so that I can slip my hands inside my clothes and touch my skin. I want to be able to feel my body naked inside my clothes.

With the exception of lingerie and theater I'm interested in everything to do with clothes and perfumes: everything which is an extension of woman.

I think that the boy-woman is a very strong image and a lot of fascinating women are like that: Gala [Dalí].