Before I start this post, I just want to say that I am devastated about the death of Lee Alexander McQueen. I have decided to wait a few days to write a post about it, as I’d like to hear a bit more about the circumstances and the reactions, before I write. I’ll post something in the next week or so. R.I.P. Lee Alexander McQueen.
It is hard now to go on and talk about fun fashion things, but I feel I am long overdue for a post about the Sonia Rykiel collections for H&M. I never wrote anything about the lingerie (I had a draft written for ages, and then it was too late,) so I definitely need to comment on that, and the knitwear coming out next week.
This body suit is pretty cool.
Not exactly a t-shirt bra, but very cute.
One of my students asked me if I was going to buy anything from the upcoming collection, and, unless I get the opportunity to do so with the least amount of effort, the answer is no. It is not because I don’t like the collection, on the contrary, it looks great but I have a lot of the real thing, so I don’t intend on buying the cheaper version.
But it looks pretty cool!
I had a look in my closet to see if I could show you all some of my fantastic Sonia Rykiel collection, and I realised that my collection consists of bags, shoes, and jewelry, I barely have any clothing at all. My Sonia Rykiel shoe collection is PHENOMENAL, with a lot of pieces that were never commercialised or that were produced in very limited quantities. My bags are mighty cool too. And the costume jewelry is fantastic. There is way too much of it to photograph tonight, so here are a few good bits.
Rhinestones, or "strass" as its called in French, are one of the key elements in all of Sonia Rykiel's collections.
My time at Sonia Rykiel was amazing, and I know I was fortunate to have worked with one of the fashion greats. She is a pretty amazing woman, and she was very invovled in all of the collections, which was rare because she was in her early seventies at the time. I can’t possibly describe the entire experience in one, or several, blog posts, but here are a few short stories that might make you smile.
My beautiful ribbon sandals.
One day Sonia took the design team to lunch at the Cafe Flore, which was across the street from the flagship store and the offices. She is known for being a bit of a swinger, and let’s just say, her love life certainly hadn’t caught up to her age. We were sitting upstairs, and a man came over to the table, which was filled with young fashion designers, good looking gays and girls, eating lunch, and right away he started chatting up Sonia. She didn’t even seem surprised. I was pretty impressed, and hope that I will still be receiving fancy pick up lines when I am 70.
These don't look like much, but the trim is real fur. And I love real fur.
If you work for Sonia Rykiel, and your name is Sonia or Nathalie, you need to adopt a new name while you are working in the company. They don’t want anyone to have the same name as the founder or her daughter. The even weirder thing was that our studio director was named Antoinette, but Sonia hated that name, so she was referred to as Louise while she worked there. Louise wasn’t her middle name or anything, it was a name assigned to her, because Sonia “liked” it.
Sonia Rykiel was not the most generous of brands when it came to giving freebies, particularly to the models. We always told the dressers to make sure that the models didn’t steal the clothing. At one show, I was helping someone dress Alek Wek, and she said she loved the shoes (I think those were the ribbon sandals shown above.) One of the senior designers said to me, “Give her the shoes! Give her the shoes!” We gave her the shoes, and what happened? A few weeks later she is photographed wearing them out, and of course they become one of the “shoes of the season.”
Yes, these ankle boots are amazing...
but even more amazing when you fold down the top and expose the pink lining. Notice the "strass" all down the side.
My favourite one-on-one Sonia Rykiel moment was when she called me in to help her tidy up the studio. I had just started there, so I felt pretty intimidated by her. Our fur supplier had dropped off some colour samples and they needed to be tidied. Now, this didn’t mean they dropped off a few bits of dyed fur, this meant we had about thirty top grade fox skins, dyed in the most beautiful colours (which, once lined with satin, sold as scarves for about $2,000 each.) She was shoving them into garage bags, and asked me to help her with it. She said they were in the way. Here I was, 20 years old, a little Vancouver girl, shoving $40,000 dollars worth of fox skins into a garbage bag with one of the most famous French fashion designers. Welcome to Paris.
My "Glam Star" strass pins.
All Sonia Rykiel for H&M images courtesy of H&M.
