Introduction
Gabrielle Greiss is a designer and artist educated at Central Saint Martins. Her early fashion work included Kostas Murkudis and an extended period with Martine Sitbon before she joined the Sonia Rykiel studio. By March 2008 she was publicly identified as the house’s new Design Director, working within a layered structure in which Nathalie Rykiel directed the image and the founder retained final approval.
Greiss left Sonia Rykiel before June 2009. Her later career included consultancy with Alber Elbaz at Lanvin and a long role within Chloé’s creative team under Clare Waight Keller and Natacha Ramsay-Levi. She subsequently returned to sculpture and developed Fables Etcetera, an independent bronze-jewellery practice launched in 2024.
Design ethos
Greiss works through a tension between delicacy and disruption. Her studio background brought an eye for softened construction, subverted femininity and a restrained punk edge, while the Rykiel role required those instincts to pass through an established system of fine knitwear, stripes and founder approval.
Her movement between fashion teams, sculpture and jewellery points to a practice attentive to object, surface and the hand. At Sonia Rykiel, authorship was collaborative: design development, styling with Nathalie Rykiel and the founder’s final judgement formed one shared process.
Disclaimer
Career history
2009
Gabrielle Greiss left Sonia Rykiel before 23 June 2009, when contemporary Resort 2010 coverage already described the house as post-Greiss. Claims extending her formal design directorship into 2010 are not retained.
2008
Gabrielle Greiss was publicly identified as Sonia Rykiel’s new Design Director by 4 March 2008. She led day-to-day collection design within a structure overseen by Nathalie Rykiel and subject to the founder’s approval.
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