GIRL WE HEART: LOLA RYKIEL
Lola Rykiel’s first formal encounter with fashion happened when she was two years old—no surprise, given that her grandmother Sonia Rykiel is the flame-haired visionary behind one of France’s most iconic brands, and her mother, Nathalie Rykiel, has long been Sonia’s deputy. “My mother put me on the runway, because at the time, she was designing a collection called Rykiel Enfant,” she says over coffee at my apartment in TriBeCa, wearing her usual uniform of trim pants and a cheeky striped knit from the Sonia by Sonia Rykiel line. “I barely knew how to walk, you know? It was all dark, and there were all those flashes, but my mom was pushing me, so I had to grow some guts.”
Lola tripped and fell, but she doesn’t seem too traumatized. Now 27 and living in New
York City’s West Village, she spends her days as the public relations director for Sonia Rykiel, sending out lookbooks, meeting with editors, and conceptualizing ways to grow the brand in the U.S. She reports in daily to executives in Paris—along with her mom.
But Lola’s future in fashion wasn’t exactly predetermined. She spent her formative years as a dancer, arriving in New York for the first time at age 20 to study classical ballet at the Martha Graham Dance Studio.
“I always loved dressing up for dance class and peeling off my beautiful leotard,” she recalls. “But
I really loved going to my grand-mother’s studio after school and watching her sketch and fit the models.”
After graduating from Martha Graham, Lola returned to Paris and was inspired to join the family business in 2010 while watching her mother work on the Sonia Rykiel for H&M collection. “Now, they love the fact that I work with them, but at the time, I didn’t want them to do me any favors,” she says. “But when I saw how interesting the work was, I realized it would be kind of stupid not to participate. So I asked my mother, ‘Do you think I can come and work for you?’”
Lola called up her grandmother with the same request. “She was so happy, she said, ‘You made me drop my pencils!’ She’s always sketching, you know.”