Beverly Hills Shop Translates Into a ‘Jazzy’ Sonia Rykiel

Sonia Rykiel’s Paris boutique “translated” to Beverly Hills is a different language entirely. But it’s one she would understand.

Her original shop on the rue de Grenelle is a dimly lit study in artful clutter. The new Rykiel boutique on Rodeo Drive is all clean, spare lines and clear views.

Rykiel designs her collections right above the Paris store in a garret-like studio in which cymbidium orchids are draped over antique gold clocks.

She has yet to see the California shop with its concrete walls and industrial lighting, its dark steel staircase and pale oak railings, designed by owner Herb Fink.

Where she lays orchids over antique clocks, he casually knots her necklaces that look just like cherries over sleek staircase railings. Where she drapes her knitted sweaters and skirts over display stands, he hangs a single sweater against the wall like a picture.

He plays music by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald on a reel-to-reel tape deck. (They are two of Rykiel’s favorite musicians.) And he shows videotapes of her fashion shows on a videocassette recorder. Such high-tech equipment adds to the industrial-design look of the Beverly Hills shop. In Paris, a VCR that screens Rykiel’s fashion shows is one of her few concessions to modern technology. The Rykiel shops in Paris and in Beverly Hills are different as a jazz step from a classic plie. But Fink believes that his version captures the essence of her style. “Sonia asked that the Beverly Hills store be designed in the spirit of Rykiel,” he says. “That gave us a wide range. It’s her taste for whimsy, her sense of the amusing and the sensuous quality in her design that I especially wanted to put into this shop.”

The new boutique in two levels is 1,500 square feet. Since it opened in the spring, Fink says, he has stocked three times as much Rykiel merchandise as he did in his Theodore and Country Club Fashions shops, where he sold Rykiels before. Prices range from $50 to $1,000 for skirts and tops. Dresses and coats sell for up to $2,000. Along with Rykiel’s entire clothing collection, Fink stocks all of her accessories.

In opening his first solo-label boutique, Fink says he had to adjust his thinking. “In a single-designer boutique you’re dependent on one person to be successful season after season, to create newness every time,” he says. “You can’t constantly introduce new things by various designers. You can’t keep new items coming into the store.”

If the success of this latest venture depends on the success of Rykiel’s designs, Fink seems certain that he and she will be doing business together for some time. “She’s always been ahead of her time, and she’s constantly evolving so that she’s always in the forefront of fashion,” he says. “She’s got a track record with me. She’s been an important image maker for my business for 17 years.”

The Sonia Rykiel Boutique is in the Rodeo Collection at 415 1/2 N. Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills.