I am still taking care of the creation of the collection alongside my staff, and my daughter Nathalie Rykiel, is the artistic director of Sonia Rykiel, who takes care of a lot of things. We are very alike and also very close.

The fashion industry can in a certain way be very hard and closed.

I married a man who was in fashion. I began to work when my daughter Nathalie was about eight or 10 years old. Then one day I began to make a sweater, and eventually the sweater was on the front page of Elle magazine. And the day after I was the queen of knit in America.

I'm not at all interested in doing clothes for movies or stage, in stage dressing or costuming. Nor can I design lingerie, for I never wear any! At one time I used to wear a lot of lingerie but now I'm in a mood of total nudity!

My clothes are put together out of different basic elements so that a woman can express the way she wants to look, transform, metamorphosize herself not as the woman I decided but as she herself wants to be.

I think that there are so many women who understand nothing about clothes and they should try and understand themselves before they start putting on disguises: they should stand in front of the mirror for a day, two days or three, and find out what they have which is beautiful, interesting: what they should show: hair, neck, arms, or hands.

For the collection, I am like a painter or a writer. I may or may not be a character in my own story.