This high-spirited glossary, illustrated with the designers previously unpublished sketches, is a witty, insightful, and highly personal self-portrait of one of the worlds leading fashion icons. Ordinary? Thats not a word in Sonia Rykiels vocabulary. The one-of-a-kind fashion designers name evokes mystery, luxury, and French elegance. Her career, unique in the history of fashion, has stood the test of time, spanning the blossoming of the feminist movement through the turn of the twenty-first century. Incredibly, her style has remained eminently modern and timeless throughout. For Sonia Rykiel, fashion is not simply a way of dressing, it has become a way of calling things into question, of living, and of taking a stand. This book, presented as a jumbled dictionary of terms, reflects Rykiels maverick, sensual, and impertinent personality and style. From her definitions of everything from dresses to chocolate, through love, her signature stripes, revolution, and perfume, from red and black to obsession and scandal, she invites us inside her vividly imaginative stratosphere in order to understand her unique vision of the world and of fashion. Poetry, narrative, and anecdote combine, along with ninety-one of Rykiels previously unpublished drawings, to produce a beautiful book that is a bold expression of the designers creative universe.