Interview

RV: Unlike many designers, you not only own your house, but you're still designing. What keeps you at it?

SR: This 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." 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. I became the world's queen of sweaters without even knowing how one was made. It's obvious today that I need to be in the center of this business even if there are people helping me. Say I go to La Traviata tonight and my team goes to see the Bee Gees. The next day we knit with La Traviata and rock, and it's fantastic. I think I'm a good thief. That means that everything I hear, everything I see, becomes part of what I do.

NR: Designers change today. All these groups have a designer and when it's not good they change them. It's a huge difference for Rykiel because women know it's Sonia and I on the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

RV: Is Sonia Rykiel all about Rive Gauche of Saint-Germain des Prés?

SR: I would say no. Rive Gauche is an intellectual idea that will always be there. What counts is the world. Even if I'm in Japan and I don't speak Japanese and the woman facing me doesn't speak French but she's dressed in Rykiel, and she recognizes me, then we have a common language right away.

NR: But Rykiel incarnates French chic. Not just that, it's Parisian chic, it's Left Bank chic. And to be even more precise, it is about Saint-Germain des Prés. The Rykiel woman is intelligent, cultivated, and aware of politics but still crazy enough to fall in love.

RV: Nathalie, what's it like working with your mother?

NR: I wanted to be a movie director. I was a creative consultant for Robert Altman on Prêt-à-
Porter [1994]. He went onstage after our Spring 1994 show and told the fashion world he was going to shoot a movie. One day I said to my mom, "I want to direct the shows-there's so much to do with music, light, staging." Now I'm president of the company as well as the art director. Our personalities are very different. I think behind a lot of success stories, you often find a duo. Sometimes one is the artist and the other is the business person. That's the case for Sonia and me because I'm very artistic and she has a sense of business.

RV: Sonia, what's it like working with your daughter and how did it happen?

SR: Nathalie wanted to do lots of things-cinema, psychiatry-and like all 20-year-olds she was trying to find herself. I thought that she was very pretty, so I told her you're going to be in my show. She started modeling and little by little she became interested and discovered that she liked this world. She's not someone who makes clothes, but she has a very good eye. She has the same eye as me, but years younger. When there's something I can't get right, and it happens often, she's the only person who can say, "It's this one, Maman. Not that one."