Episode 30: Edina Ronay
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Last November I had the opportunity to chat with fashion designer, actress and model Edina Ronay over Zoom.
Belvárosi Kávéház, a grand coffee shop owned by Ronay’s family in Budapest.
Edina was born in Budapest in 1943 to a family of successful restaurateurs. After the war, as Hungary was falling to communism, Edina and her parents escaped to London. In this conversation, she speaks very openly about how the Iron Curtain affected her family.
In London, her father Egon Ronay first managed three restaurants in Piccadilly that were owned by a family friend, before opening a French restaurant in Knightsbridge. He then founded what became a very successful and influential series of guidebooks, starting with Egon Ronay's Guide to British Eateries in 1957. He is widely considered one of the most important people in British food history, responsible for raising culinary standards across the nation.
Dick and Edina on their wedding day—she is wearing a dress by Ossie Clark.
While studying fashion at Central St. Martin’s, Edina was asked to be in a movie. After filming an uncredited role in The Pure Hell of St Trinian’s, she was bitten by the acting bug and enrolled in RADA. She appeared in several British films, was a key member of the hip London scene, and dated Michael Caine before she met her husband, Dutch film producer (later photographer) Dick Polak. Together they lived a hippie life in Morocco and Formentera, until they returned to London to act, model and have children. In the early 1970s, Edina began selling vintage clothes from a shop on the King's Road that she shared with fellow model Lena Stengard. When Edina discovered a cache of 30s and 40s vintage knitting patterns in 1978, a new business was born. Highly successful from the start, Edina & Lena sold their hand knits in stores all over the world. In the 1980s Edina took over full control of the company—renamed Edina Ronay, it expanded into dresses, separates, and suits.
“Originally, she and her partner used sixty-year-old pattern books and cottage loads of nimble-fingered country knitters. Now, the handwork remains a feature—she employs 2,000 knitters —but Edina Ronay has experimented and created fresh twists on old patterns, with new bold colors and innovative designs. Her smart variations on ancient Fair Isle designs, her soft, feminine bobble-knit cardigans, remain annual collector’s items, but she is increasingly drawn to the very new—a black and white palette, sharp graphics, classics with a twist, such as this spring’s lanky cricket sweater to be paired with some of her new trousers and skirts. All are wearable and wonderful.”
Edina Ronay. Photographed by Caroline Arber for Men in Vogue, Autumn/Winter 1970.
Edina Ronay photographed by Norman Eales, for Cosmopolitan UK, December 1972.
One of the mainstays of London Fashion Week, Edina Ronay’s clothes were a constant in the British fashion press and beloved by socialites. In 1992 sold her retail operations and license to Dawsons International, a British textiles and apparel company. The partnership was unsuccessful, leading Dawsons to revert the Ronay label to her after less than two years. Edina continues to run her label from her home in London—her 40s-inspired frocks and knits can be ordered through her website www.edinaronay.com
Throughout her career, she was at the center of swinging and creative London. With a lot of humor and a keen memory, Edina chats about all of this and more, including her over 50-year marriage, motherhood, and spirituality.
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Designs from Edina Ronay’s late 1980s and early 1990s collections:
