Rykiel opened her first ready-to-wear store on Paris’s Left Bank in 1968 and her fashion empire went on to include menswear, children’s clothing, accessories and perfumes.
According to her website, external, Rykiel “urged women to be eccentric, seductive, mysterious, and to create their own style”.
During her career she developed new techniques like inside-out stitching and no-hem finishings, with other star pieces including embroidered knitted tops and rhinestone-studded berets.
Rykiel wrote several novels and also featured in 1994 film Pret-a-Porter, Robert Altman’s satirical take on the fashion industry.
In a 2005 interview, she said she had been plagued by doubt in her early career.
“When I started in fashion, for the first 10 years, I said to myself every day, ‘I’m going to quit tomorrow,'” she told Le Nouvel Observateur.
“People are going to figure out that I don’t know anything. I always thought I’d be discredited in the end.”
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