Sonia Rykiel quotes:

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.

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.

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.

Being one step ahead of a fashion trend is not so important to me. What matters is to always forge ahead.

Perfume is like a parenthesis, a moment of freedom, peace, love and sensuality in between the disturbances of modern living.

The key to my collections is sensuality.

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.

How can you live the high life if you do not wear the high heels?

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

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.

I think in the darkest moments, we need a break.

Perfume follows you; it chases you and lingers behind you. It's a reference mark. Perfume makes silence talk.

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."

A very young girl, myself, and my 70-year-old mother all look quite different wearing some of the same clothes from my shop. The whole secret is to know how to do it and some people never will, just like some can't make light pastry: they are lacking in some sort of grace.

After all these years of creating my collections, I still doubt my decision even until the last minute before the fashion show, I keep questioning myself and wondering if I did the right thing.

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.

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.

[Nathalie Rykiel] knows by heart the genetic codes of the brand, and she also has a very contemporary and creative opinions about it.

A scarf has to be the most beautiful thing ever invented to wear! It's a winding, a continuity, an infinity! I love things that are endless, I hate them to stop. It's like order and disorder: I rather love disorder and things that move, it's a state where one gets more things done!

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

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.

Everything I do is really an expression of myself, through colors and shapes and, at the same time, I try to explain what I feel not only as a creator but also as a woman. I cannot separate one from the other.

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.

For the collection, I am like a painter or a writer. I may or may not be a character in my own story.

From the very beginning I've said to women not to follow the fashion rules blindly, and to adapt clothes to suit who they are, and not the contrary.

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.

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!

I am still taking care of the creation of the collection alongside my staff, and my daughter Nathalie Rykiel, is the artistic director of Sonia Rykiel, who takes care of a lot of things. We are very alike and also very close.

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 can be negatively criticised, but this is actually a positive thing, especially if the critic is smart, and helpful. I am very attentive to critics, they let me go ahead and push myself harder to continue.

I can't go any place without going to museums. It's very important for me.

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.

I did not plan to have such a career in the fashion world. All that I wanted, was to have ten kids and raise them!

I don't like women who are multiform, who wear many different shapes. Women who retain a unique shape are usually unique people.

I feel like a slave, and in a way like an artist, because I need to get inspiration everyday, from everything and everyone...

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!

I have the feeling I've always done what I wanted throughout my life.

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

I love flinging everything I buy behind me onto the back-seat of the car: it's always full of packages when I travel, when I leap in my car!

I love to leave, to be ready-for, to be on the run! That's my boyish side, it's the pant's me! Pants which allow for the attitudes, gestures and movements of a man but that are still female in taste and free enough so that I can slip my hands inside!

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 started by designing a sweater very close to the body, because I couldn't find any for myself.

I think that clothes should be a shelter like a house or a rug. I think that there is that element of protection and a uniform can be just that.

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

I think that there are so many women who understand nothing about clothes and they should try and understand themselves before they start putting on disguises: they should stand in front of the mirror for a day, two days or three, and find out what they have which is beautiful, interesting: what they should show: hair, neck, arms, or hands.

I was influenced by the hippie movement in San Francisco and by the feminist movement, which had arrived in Paris.

I was rather free, and I always did what I wanted to do, sometimes without listening to the people who warned me not to do this or that.

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.

I'm not at all interested in doing clothes for movies or stage, in stage dressing or costuming. Nor can I design lingerie, for I never wear any! At one time I used to wear a lot of lingerie but now I'm in a mood of total nudity!

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

In the same way, I can wake up with a very positive idea of what I want to do for my collection, and be completely desperate at night regarding the same thing. And I do a lot of other things too: Writing for me is almost as important as drawing my collection.

It doesn't matter one damn bit whether fashion is art or not. You don't question whether an incredible chef is an artist or not-his cakes are delicious and that's all that matters.

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

It was by coincidence that I ended up opening my first shop in 1968, and I haven't stopped since. I now find myself trying to do everything. I couldn't live without creating my collections, without writing, drawing and reading. But I couldn't either live without being close to my children on a daily basis and also to my grandchildren, and to all the people I love. I guess I am like every woman today, one who juggles her work and family life.

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

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

Men and women are so alike that a woman must make an intellectual effort to differentiate herself. As soon as one understands who one is, one can disguise oneself any way one wants. As soon as one has found one's look, one's shape, one does not need to alter it too much, in fact I would say that one should not change it.

My breakfast is very important.

My clothes are put together out of different basic elements so that a woman can express the way she wants to look, transform, metamorphosize herself not as the woman I decided but as she herself wants to be.

My husband had a clothing store in Paris, and I had his factory make specifically for me something similar to the one I was looking for. We made it in different colours, and decided to sell them in the store...and in a day, they were sold out! This sweater became later known as the "poor boy sweater" and it ended up making the cover of Elle magazine, and in a day, I became the "Queen of knit", without knowing anything about knitting!

My parents never mentioned anything about fashion in our household, instead we used to talk about literature, theatre, and arts...this is why I have kept a real relation with the Art world, by putting books from the beginning in my shops' windows.

Sometimes in the fashion industry we come across some unfair rules, but no one is obliged to follow them.

The essence of seduction for me in a man, although it stems from his rough, almost rough-neck looks, still contains something of the woman: he must be seductive and intelligent.

The fashion industry can in a certain way be very hard and closed.

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.

The knitted jumper comes in different trends, colours, shapes, and is adaptable in various ways when wearing. But there are also different noticeable marks of Sonia Rykiel brand, like black stripes which are very recognisable too...

The natures of men and women are very mixed and for me the most fascinating type of woman is the one who is a little masculine, has a little of the man in her, and the sort of man who is fabulous is the one who is a little woman too. It's impossible not to mix them!

We are not saying that all women should be thin like these very thin and young girls. We are creating a show, with its artistic codes and rules, and we have to try not to mix up all the codes together.

When I was a kid, all I liked were books and chocolate.

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.

You can create fashion everywhere in the world, but the place where you are crowned is Paris.

You know, the more grown-up you are, the more you like Proust.

Your body can be very female, which is something you can do nothing about, but then you can have the soul, the mind and the spirit of both male and female. The women friends I am closest to somehow have this masculine side to them, they shove their hands in their pockets when they walk: I love that side.