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French fashion designer Sonia Rykiel has passed away, aged 86. She was known as the queen of knitting and suffered from Parkinson’s disease.
Great success in the sixties
Sonia Rykiel, born in 1930 in Paris, got her breakthrough as a fashion designer with the Poor Boy Sweater in 1962 and quickly, famous people like Françoise Hardy, Brigitte Bardot and Audrey Hepburn were seen wearing her clothes.
The very first store with her collection opened in 1968 in Paris, quickly adding men’s and children’s clothing, accessories and perfumes. In 2012, Rykiel revealed she had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease 15 years earlier, but that she had kept the disease a secret for as long as the symptoms were not too conspicuous.
Her daughter, Nathalie Rykiel, currently leads her fashion empire, while Sonia Rykiel kept on designing, like when she made an exclusive lingerie collection for Swedish fashion chain H&M in 2009.
