Well, that was entertaining. This is Sonia Rykiel’s 50th anniversary, and to celebrate, creative director Julie de Libran called in none other than Bananarama, the British pop group of the early 1980s, who recently launched a U.S. and U.K. reunion tour, to do a three-song gig. As they sang, models who were born a decade or more after Bananarama made it big danced behind them. Time collapsed.
This journalist was reminded of the 40th anniversary of the brand in 2008, a brilliant show in which tout Paris and some American designers too created one-offs as a tribute to Madame Rykiel. The standouts then were a Rodarte sweater, Rykiel being famous for sweaters, with Obama embroidered on the front, and a Martin Margiela (the man, not the Maison) fur chubby made from wigs the same frizzy shade of red as Rykiel’s mane. (That piece happens to be one of the stars of his new retrospective at the Palais Galliera.) To the talents who participated, Sonia Rykiel stood for something, the spirit of the soixant-huitards, women’s liberation, a certain gamine effervescence.
For her own anniversary party, De Libran looked to the musical movements of her youth as inspiration. The post-punks and the new romantics awoke in her a love of fashion that she has carried with her to Rykiel. She reanimated it on the runway with nods to ’60s mod, ’90s grunge, and many points in between. The most charming aspect of the show—and the most Rykiel—was the way De Libran sent out models dressed in similar looks in groups and insisted that they smile. First up was a quartet of Mongolian lamb chubbies (very Rykiel) with matching trapper hats and mukluks. And last was a foursome of models in velvet pantsuits that riffed on Rykiel’s popular jogging suits of the 1980s. There were some outliers here—the sheer, spiderweb-y lace numbers come to mind—and the whole would’ve benefitted from a cheerier color palette, but all in all, this was good fun.
