Sonia Rykiel, exhibition

PRESS
RELEASE
> les arts décoratifs
www.lesartsdecoratifs.fr
© Dominique Issermann, Suit and Hat, 1980
Sonia Rykiel, Exhibition
20 November 2008 – 19 April 2009
PRESS CONTACTS
Marie-Laure MOREAU
Isabelle MENDOZA
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press release
> SONIA RYKIEL, EXHIBITION
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the House of Sonia Rykiel, Les Arts Décoratifs is organising the first major retrospective
of her work in Paris. ‘Sonia Rykiel, Exhibition’ takes us on a thematic journey of discovery in which 220 creations from 1968 to the
present day mingle with the fashion photographs and videos which forged the image of this pioneer of contemporary fashion.
In
1962,
Sonia
Rykiel
was
already
developing her personal style in the
maternity dresses and figure-hugging
knitwear she designed for the Laura
boutique in Paris. But the story of the
House of Sonia Rykiel did not begin
until 1968, the year the company was
founded and opened its first boutique
in Paris’s Saint-Germain quarter. Sonia
Rykiel rapidly became the undisputed
queen of knitwear with her mini-sweaters
disregarding
traditional
proportions.
Knitwear became her favourite medium
and one in which she continued to create
throughout her career.
When in 1974 Sonia Rykiel decided to
expose the lining and structure of her
garments, she was a decade ahead of
the gestures and attitudes which would
© Dominique Issermann, 1987
later define the history of contemporary
fashion. Stitching on the outside, like
the
beams
and
columns
supporting
and creating a female cathedral, the
abolition of the hem and the celebration
of the unfinished, all these House of
Rykiel innovations would soon become
passports to modernity for experimental
and conceptual designers to come…
A fashionable silhouette can become the
carbon copy of a decade, effacing its
predecessors, but the Rykiel look is still
a lasting blueprint of modernity. Unlike
other designers, Sonia Rykiel’s creations
leave little scope for historians intent on
precisely dating a designer’s creations.
If Sonia Rykiel’s work has stood the
test of time so well, this is because
she has always espoused her time so
completely…
Sonia Rykiel was also a pioneer in her
predilection for black, synonymous for
Spring Collection / Summer 1977 © Rights reserved
her with seduction and freedom, using it
in the 80s and would dominate fashions
to sheath silhouettes that had hardly left
to come. From then on, at the salons
the Pop years and upsetting the bourgeois
and on the podium, black enveloped
elegance and taboos of the 70s. Black,
the Rykiel mystery and epitomised the
the dark casket that illuminates pale
modernity of her fashion house well
faces and the ink that draws a garment’s
before Japanese and Belgian couturiers
architecture, definitively asserted itself
appropriated it.
Spring Collection / Summer 1973 © Rights reserved
press release
> SONIA RYKIEL, EXHIBITION
Sonia Rykiel is a lady of fashion but
also a woman of letters, who talks
as
she
writes
and
writes
as
she
speaks. She loves playing with words,
turning them into inscriptions on her
clothes,
political
slogans
or
books.
Her exceptional style has fascinated
fashion
designers,
artists
and
filmmakers alike.
The exhibition plunges us into Sonia
Rykiel’s
mysterious
and
haunting
universe, in which her clothes play
hide and seek with catwalk videos and
photographs.
evokes
a
The
exhibition
Haussmanian
space
apartment,
which one gradually discovers as one
goes from room to room: a rotunda,
doors, boudoirs and alcoves succeed
one another in a muffled atmosphere
emphasized by flesh-coloured gauze
revealing the glamorous and sensual
touch Sonia Rykiel loves so much.
Sonia and Nathalie Rykiel, Spring Collection / Summer 2008 © Rights reserved
The exhibition covers all the major
with
‘Sonia Rykiel, Exhibition’ will end with
universe and of the controlled Parisian
Dominique Isserman sealed the creation
a formidable tribute, never previously
style she has now passed on to the
of a myth and the timelessness of her
paid in the field of fashion and creation,
next generation, into the skilful and
creations. The exhibition will fully explore
to be revealed during the House of
talented hands of Nathalie Rykiel.
the work which united her and the
Rykiel’s anniversary show on 1 October
The exhibition opens with a series of
photographer, who took all her publicity
2008.
rarely shown portraits by Sarah Moon,
photographs from 1979 to 1990.
themes
emblematic
of
the
Rykiel
Sonia
Rykiel’s
collaboration
then a retrospective of Sonia Rykiel
Some of the masterpieces in the Musée
The
sweaters.
de la Mode et du Textile’s collection will
exhibition is a genuine Sonia Rykiel
book
which
accompanies
the
revolutionary
highlight and mirror the innovative work
bible. A catalogue raisonné of 40years
stripes but also rarely used materials
of the House of Rykiel, illustrating the
of creation, it covers her career season
such as sponge, which she used to
story of knitwear down the ages and the
by
make
use of writing on clothing since the 18th
with
and lace and fur, which tattoo the body
century.
first appeared on the catwalk, in a
with subtle accents straight out of the
Sonia Rykiel’s charismatic and iconic
long ‘film’ of 6,500 photographs. This
1930s… Trousers more elegant than
personality is evoked in portraits by
definitive work will also include essays
long evening dresses, frills, chiffon
artists and notably by the long interview
on Sonia Rykiel and her relationship
and relief-sewn flowers evoking her
by Andy Warhol for his TV programme ‘
with the United States and Japan and
eternal and poetic vocabulary…
Warhol’s TV’ in 1981.
her fetishist use of black.
Black,
inside-out,
the
most
the
elegant
sweatsuits,
season,
each
collection
garment
by
collection,
presented
as
it
key information
Exhibition curator:
> Olivier SAILLARD, head of the Mode et Textile exhibition programme at Les Arts Décoratifs
Exhibition design:
> Jean-Christophe POGGIOLI and Pierre BEUCLER
les arts décoratifs
Hélène David-Weill,
President
Béatrice salmon,
Museums director
Pascale de seze,
Communications director
the museums
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exhibition catalogue
A catalogue raisonné covering Sonia Rykiel’s
> Press relations:
Richard Pestour Communication
> Phone +33 01 42 56 26 11
40-year career
Paperback, 640 pages
6,500 illustrations, 50 colour pages
website
Editions Les Arts Décoratifs
Bilingual French-English edition
49 Euros TTC
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