The French designer Sonia Rykiel is not one of those fashion icons who goes in for the sloppy, unconstructed look. Nor is she the sort of woman who is likely to admire the shiny-faced, potato-picking images of models so dear to current American designers. As far as she is concerned, fashion is about seduction and art, and being seen to make an aesthetic effort.
At least that's possibly what is going on in her design world because, frankly, it's somewhat difficult to tell.
Rykiel is a mistress of paradox and a devotee of the Delphic utterance (a typical question and answer routine runs along the following lines: 'What worries you?' 'Everything. And nothing').
It's a baffling experience to meet her. She conducts proceedings with an air of mysterious exhaustion, fluttering hands and an occasional amused gleam from the sooty eyes which lurk under her bright red fringe. It's a portrait of the flame-haired temptress as successful artist, and it's highly diverting to witness.
Rykiel was in town recently and this interview was conducted in her suite at the Grand Hyatt. She doesn't like air-conditioning, so the ambient temperature was of approximately Saharan levels, but when she eventually emerged from the administrations of a specially supplied make-up artist, she shivered delicately and murmured about the cold. As she cultivates an air of fragility and hauteur, she was naturally reluctant to smile for the (perspiring) photographer, imploring him not to come too close. She assumed the air of a bird about to have its wings pulled off.
After this ordeal, she sat on a sofa and gazed dreamily out to the harbour. Her answer to the first question of the session (Why are you here?) was not encouraging. 'I don't know,' she sighed. She has a tendency, of which this could have been an example, to launch into those discussions of a philosophical nature so dear to French cafe-dwellers.