The Sonia Rykiel presentation was in the Palais des Beaux-Arts, around the corner and down the block from the label’s landmark Saint-Germain des Prés boutique, where Julie de Libran staged her first three shows for the brand. The much larger and grander space is a sign that the business is doing well under De Libran’s leadership, as is the new Rykiel shop that just opened on Madison Avenue in New York City, which reproduces the Left Bank store’s looks down to the well-stocked bookshelves and lacquered red walls.
The charm of this label is that it still feels very much like a family-run operation. It’s a quality that De Libran played up in her new collection, which included a subtle but very special print by the collage artist Maggie Cardelús, showing the faces of Rykiel’s women. It featured house founder, Sonia, as well as her daughter, Nathalie, and Nathalie’s daughter, Lola, alongside De Libran and Cardelús, and many combinations thereof using a cutout technique. The print appeared on a leather skirtsuit (cropped jacket and midi skirt) and on silk dresses with soft ruffles around the neckline that fell in tiers to the calf—all worth a close look.
Narrow and elongated, and perched on platform boots or pom-pom-toed sandals, De Libran’s silhouette is the silhouette of the season, but she’s led less by trends than she is by the house heritage. There’s nothing more integral to that heritage than Rykiel’s famous stripes, and De Libran made interesting use of them—cutting a compact knit for closely fitted coats and a pair of high-waisted flares with marinière vibes for day, and for evening, when stripes are more unexpected, combining horizontal bands of blue sequins and lacquered black lace. There was an abundance of fur, Mongolian lamb, and fox, used as trim not just on outerwear but on suits and dresses, or as sleeves. It gave the collection a snazzy, dressed-up sensibility. De Libran did a few patchworked denim pieces, but you wanted to get a fuller sense of how she envisions her Rykiel woman’s downtime. Perhaps a project for next season.
