Sonia Rykiel opened a new shop on Madison Avenue earlier this year. It’s modeled after the brand’s Boulevard Saint-Germain flagship, down to the lacquer red walls, the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and the Daniela Andrier–created scent of vetiver, rose water, mandarin, and jasmine. It was the location of designer Julie de Libran’s Resort collection for the label. In a back room where the models were assembling, De Libran described the collection as a mix of Paris and her native Provence. Non-Francophiles in need of clarification can think of the divide between New York and the Hamptons.
Representing the Paris part of the lineup was a black-and-white check stretch-knit dress worn over a cotton blouse with poet sleeves, very pulled together and polished. De Libran also did some unconventional suiting, in place of pants, showing full-legged shorts and over-the-knee glove leather boots. The Provence part of the equation included a lot of off-the-shoulder blouses worn over full skirts or culottes, and a couple of delicately embroidered gauzy peasant dresses. City and country, she placed a strong emphasis on the waist with rib cage–to-hip wide belts. Coupled with the silk foulards the models wore tied on their heads, the look was more gypsy than gamine. Overall, this had a dressier sensibility than other pre-collections De Libran has shown for the house. A couple of striped knit dresses, the house specialty, had a more relaxed spirit. A little more of that sensibility would not have gone amiss.
