Sonia Rykiel is all about seduction. The way she designs clothes. The way she talks about clothes. The way she talks and writes about life, love and clothes. For Sonia Rykiel, everything is an act of seduction.

But the flamboyant redhead, who inspired the Anouk Aimée character in Robert Altman’s Ready-to-Wear movie, is adamant that her designs are not meant in any way to seduce men.

View Sonia Rykiel's photos from the show

“I design for women who feel good about themselves, because a woman who loves herself will seduce everybody.”

And who is this woman Rykiel has been designing for 33 years now? “Slightly androgynous, she is a woman who has her hands full with bags, children, husbands, lovers. A woman who works but also loves cinema, theater, museums. A woman like you and me,” answered the designer when asked by Madame Figaro in a recent interview.

Her mother was Russian, her father Romanian, but Sonia was raised in Paris. She had no intention of becoming a fashion designer. “My only ambition,” she says, “was to have 10 children.” She came from a bourgeois family of intellectuals and scientists for whom fashion was frivolous and futile. But her husband owned a fashion store in Paris and she got interested in what he was doing.

The first garment she created was a sweater that she had made by an Italian knitting mill to her specifications. When she received it, the editor of Elle magazine happened to be in the store and decided to put it on the cover of her magazine the following week.

That first sweater was followed by over 6,000 others that made Rykiel the “Queen of knits,” a title she still holds more than 30 years later. She made her sweaters longer, into dresses and cardigans. She belted them and showed their seams inside out. She wrote about them. She wrote on them with rhinestones and sequins. She even created a perfume in the shape of a sweater.

Rykiel opened her first boutique in 1968 on Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where her company headquarters are still located. Her first collection was maternity wear because she was pregnant: “I wanted the entire world to know.”

Her subsequent collections were influenced by her life as a woman and as a mother. Garments with no hems, garments that did not crease. Practical, realistic, comfortable. And garments that did not overpower women. “A garment becomes alive when the body moves. It does not exist without the woman,” she says, adding that she doesn’t agree with designers who disguise women.

“Male designers,” she explains, “have a creative advantage. They have no barriers when they design for women because they don’t have to wear the garment. A woman, who knows her body, will censor herself because she knows how difficult it can be to get on a bus or come out of a taxi.”

Rykiel is more than just a fashion designer. Her passions – family, friends, her houses – obviously play an important role in her life. She loves talking about her children, her four sisters, her grand-daughters Tatania, Lola and Salomé.

Like the women she dresses, Sonia Rykiel has many interests. Aside from her design career, she has also written novels and a children’s book; has redesigned the interiors of the Crillon and Lutetia hotels in Paris; and is an active member of the chocolate lovers’ club (Les Croqueurs de Chocolat). She loves desserts and on her web site (www.soniarykiel.com), she gives a dozen dessert recipes.

Sonia Rykiel - who has had the honor of having a rose named after her - has also received numerous awards, including Officier des Arts et des Lettres and Officier de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur. “Decorations and honors are not vital,” she comments, “but they make you want to go further, to surpass yourself to be loved even more.”