The Queen of Knits who just can't stop Not quite what you'd expect from an 82-year-old. But Rykiel is not your average octogenarian. When the former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, awarded her the Légion d'honneur in 2009, he remarked: "You are terribly French." And many of her designs are just that - she is most famous for her take on the classic Breton jumper, except hers have super-sized stripes in clashing colours, with a figure-hugging cut. But Rykiel's influence stretches far beyond France. The Sonia Rykiel brand is now a multimillion-pound empire with more than 1,000 outlets; and her 2009 collaboration with H&M sold out in a matter of hours. Not bad for someone who had no formal training ­- and was not interested in fashion in the first place. She was born Sonia Fils into a bourgeois household in Paris where fashion was considered too frivolous for serious conversation. I was a tomboy - my mother always said I would never become a woman because I loved to dress like a boy. Rykiel's comfortable background meant she was destined never to work but to become a wife and mother. And that was the way her life was going until, pregnant with her daughter, Nathalie, in 1962, she found herself frustrated by the lack of chic maternity wear. Before then, I was not interested in clothes. I only started caring when I was pregnant. Because I was still so slim and I could wear nothing. Everything was for older women; nothing was for me. I wanted to look good. When you're pregnant, it's the most beautiful part of your life. Luckily, her then-husband, Sam Rykiel, owned a boutique. Sonia swiftly designed a range of maternity clothes, as well as a figure-hugging knit that she named the Poor Boy Sweater. An item that could be worn to the office as well as to dinner, the Poor Boy was an instant hit - French Elle spotted it in the shop window and put it on their cover; while Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve started wearing theirs religiously. Rykiel opened her first store in 1968. Her clothes were playful, modern; a breath of fresh air in the stifling world of French fashion, which still centred around couture. "I didn't want to dress like other women," she says. I wanted to find in dresses what I found in books. And it was impossible because nothing was made like that. She was also one of a handful of women in an industry dominated by men. But I wasn't aware of being different. Still, being a woman gave her a different perspective. "A man is sometimes more creative than a woman because he will not wear the clothes himself," she has said. Practical considerations to him are secondary. "I am aware of the spirit of women," she says now. Especially because I have five sisters. Now I also have three granddaughters. And a daughter. I have always had women around me. In 1972, the American magazine Women's Wear Daily declared her the "Queen of Knits." Yet she was a single mother and, although friends with Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld and other big names at that time, wasn't part of that hedonistic scene. "Because I was a mother, I wasn't a party girl," she says. I preferred having dinner parties with candles at home, seeing close friends, reading a lot. "It's difficult having children but at the same time you have to keep on working," she continues. You can't stop your life because of children. You shouldn't be their slaves. Today, her fashion influence is omnipresent. Rykiel was the first to print words on knitwear, the first to add studs and rhinestones. She was even the first to create garments with inside-out seams, deconstructing well before Belgian designers in the Eighties. Given her influence, it is understandable that she is reluctant to talk much about her Parkinson's. She doesn't want it to define her. Rykiel discovered she had the disease when she was 66 and didn't tell a soul - not even her daughter. Her doctor advised her to keep it to herself, since she had a relatively mild form, so "I tried to be invisible, to pretend that nothing was wrong," she wrote. Privately, though, she was terrified - her mother had developed Parkinson's when she was 70, at a time when there was little in the way of effective medication, and Sonia remembered her suffering. When Rykiel could no longer keep it hidden, she decided to make the news public via her book. "The reaction has been very good from everyone," she says. And even though she is tired, in pain much of the time, and shakes, "which I hate," she is relieved that she no longer has to conceal it. "I have always written, since 1968," she continues, very much drawing a line under the subject, "I've written 16 books [everything from children's stories to erotic novels]. Some of my books tell women how to take care of themselves. Because when we go to school we learn only how to be mathematicians, to be scientists, to write. No one teaches you how to dress. Earlier this year, the Sonia Rykiel brand was bought by Hong Kong investors. The Rykiel family still holds a 20 per cent stake. Sonia's daughter, Nathalie, is now vice president (she also has a son, Jean-Philippe, who is a composer). Mother and daughter are extremely close - Nathalie lives with her husband in a flat upstairs - and Rykiel claims they always see eye-to-eye. It's fantastic because she has the same look, the same aesthetic, as me. Rykiel remains proud that she never trained, thriving on her innate curiosity. "Fashion schools teach you in a certain way and you stay in that way," she muses. You don't create by yourself. I get my influences from everything. For instance, the stripe I see in a cathedral can also end up in your sweater. And have there been any mistakes along the way? Of course! I'm never happy. But that, I think, is normal.