Sonia Rykiel passed away on August 25 at the age of 86. The entryway to the house’s École des Beaux-Arts venue today was flanked by TV screens playing vintage footage of the designer, and the show began and ended with tributes to her iconic sweaters. At the finale, showers of silver paillettes rained down like confetti, and there were teary eyes all around. Rykiel largely retreated from the spotlight after her label’s 40th anniversary fete in 2008, but her legend looms large in Paris fashion. She opened her first shop in the tumultuous year of 1968 and she was forever linked with the women’s liberation movement that followed. It helped that her clothes—those long, lean sweaters, and the bias slips and marabou boas—were famously liberating.
Freedom was loosely a theme for creative director Julie de Libran’s new collection. The clothes were based on workwear and uniforms, neither of which typically convey notions of freedom, but thanks to their supersize, away-from-the-body proportions and silhouettes, they conjured images of breezy summer days. Among the highlights were a pretty white dress with drop shoulders, puff sleeves, and a graceful A-line shape, and a navy halter dress embroidered with colorful stripes and accented by a black floral corsage at the neckline. As for knits, De Libran took cues from sailors’ marinières for a couple of terrific sweaters with giant bell sleeves. De Libran’s bags followed the same general easy-does-it rule: Canvas boat totes were big and bigger, and leather sacks looked like riffs on traditional net market bags. The show-closing brocade trapeze tops and trousers came with unfinished edges, a Rykiel signature from the designer’s earliest days. Somewhere up there above the confetti shower, she was smiling.
