A biography for Sonia Rykielhasn’t been written yet.
“Fashion should be a kind of bouillon de culture.”
“A woman who walks well parts crowds - it's something we should all be taught to do.”
“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 don't know how to knit.”
“Paris was a melting pot.”
“People are going to figure out that I don't know anything. I always thought I'd be discredited in the end.”
“When a woman confuses what she is with what she wears, then something is wrong inside.”
“My view is that you have to deal with who you are. It's hard work, in a way, but somebody has to do it.”
“I hate wasting time getting dressed. I like to put something on and just think, 'Yes. That's it.'”
“As soon as I am up, I brush my hair. I eat breakfast first: tea and brown bread, and sometimes a fresh fruit juice like orange or grapefruit. I write notes on the previous day in my notebook, then I shower.”
“1968 was the beginning of the hippie movement in fashion. That movement made fashion change completely. It was not necessary to be always dressed up. You could be dressed the way you wanted - it was absolute freedom.”
“We are working women. Also, we have the problem of children, of men, to take care of our houses, so many things. I try to explain that in my clothes. They are clothes for everyday life. That is the real life of woman.”
“My fashion has no time, no season. It doesn't go out of style. If someone decides that clothes can go out of fashion, then you are deciding a woman can go out of fashion.”
“What pushes me forward is everything I have learned: political, social, cultural. I put all that into the clothes.”
“To be modern is to be aware of what is going on.”
“I was a tomboy, always fairly eccentric, and convinced I'd grow up to be an actress.”
“I have the impression that the women around me are like me - smaller, taller, fatter, thinner - but in fact, we are all the same.”
“It's important to keep on keeping on, to feel good about yourself and be happy with who you are.”
“My only ambition was to have 10 children. Fashion was an accident.”
“I don't read e-mails because I hate them.”