A staffer from Elle happened to be present: Françoise Hardy modelled it for the magazine’s cover, Brigitte Bardot and Audrey Hepburn bought several, and other knitwear companies struggled and failed to reproduce Rykiel’s novel approach. The prototype went back and forth between Paris and Venice seven times before the perfect “poor-boy sweater”, skinny-ribbed and striped, arrived in the shop. Later, she asked a representative from an Italian machine-knitwear company to make a sweater modified from one Rykiel was wearing – she wanted it smaller, with a high armhole and tight sleeves. She had no design training and not much ambition, but in 1961 she charmed the suppliers to her husband’s family-owned boutique in Paris into making maternity dresses for her that, radically, revealed her bump, and thus scandalised her mother-in-law. Like Coco Chanel, Sonia Rykiel, who has died aged 86, went into fashion to provide herself with garments she could not otherwise obtain.
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