Anna Sui (Q2668)
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Anna Sui is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Anna Sui |
Anna Sui is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
1981
Designer
1991
hat designer
Anna Sui has five fragrances launching in the fall, so she’ll do a presentation of her new collection then. Her show at the Strand last season was a highlight of New York, but if it was disappointing not to see these clothes in motion on the runway, a visit to her Garment District office and showroom made up for it.Sui’s mood board is always teeming with references. This time around it was Andy Warhol’s early commercial art she was drawn to. “I wanted to do something really soft, and I’ve always loved his pre-Pop drawings,” she said. They informed the pastel color palette as well as the prints. Sui enlisted the artist Paul LeRoy Gehres, whose personal work often channels Warhol’s, to create a cherub logo motif. You may see it on the shrunken ’90s tees that Sui’s young fans are now collecting. She also pointed out a new printing technique that evoked the blotted outlines of Warhol’s illustrations on a pretty lace slip dress.Travel, resorts, and country clubs were on Sui’s mind. If you’ve ever come across photos of your mother or grandmother on vacation at the beach in the ’60s, you’ll get her drift. In the mix were terry lounge sets, A-line micro-shifts in fluorescent jacquards and floral piqués, souvenir print silk-cotton voile pajamas, cardigans that “look like something Dean Martin would’ve worn,” and bejeweled cat-eye sunglasses. The ruffled pastel tulle prom dresses were a sweet alternative to the too-old-for-them styles many high schoolers are wearing now.Sui mentioned that her actor-niece Chase Sui Wonders had been by the studio to see the collection. “‘Auntie Anna,’” she said, “‘it’s like the opposite of brat, it’s so earnest, it’s demure.’ She kind of got it,” said Sui. She really did. And for the record, Wonders said that “before the whole demure quote came out.”
7 September 2024
A springtime trip to see a Pre-Raphaelites exhibition at the Museo San Domenico in Forli, Italy, inspired Anna Sui’s new collection. Back here in New York, Rossetti’sProsperineandThe Beguiling of MerlinandLove Among the Ruinsby Edward Burne-Jones appeared on her mood board wall, among many other paintings of the period. “He could’ve been a dress designer,” she said of Burne-Jones, “the way he painted clothing.” But she was also drawn to his romanticism. “Imagination, folklore, fairy tales—I think it’s what we’re needing,” she said. Also: “I think we’re on the verge of a big change in fashion, moving past this whole minimal period.”That’s good news to Sui, who has never been much of a minimalist herself. But you shouldn’t expect the loose bodices and flowing sleeves of the frocks depicted in the Rossetti and co.’s paintings. Instead, she lifted from their indigo palette, and created prints, embroideries, and jacquards evocative of their contemporary, the textile designer William Morris, as well as the artist Aubrey Beardsley, who came along a little bit later. The collection includes granny dresses and 1940s dresses and a matching softly structured jacket and midi-skirt, all of which have the vintage flavor distinctive of Sui’s work. An ivory lace minidress with a violet bow, meanwhile, channels early 1990s Courtney Love. Thanks to Instagram and TikTok, Sui has young fans for whom riot-grrl grunge seems as ancient-history as the Pre-Raphaelites. For them there are tweedy minis, shrunken logo tees, and grandpa cardigans.
7 June 2024
Debbie Harry, the New York Dolls’s David Johansen, Marc Jacobs, and Sofia Coppola and her husband Thomas Mars, the lead singer of Phoenix, were all in attendance at the Strand’s Rare Book Room tonight for Anna Sui’s fall 2024 show. Gen Z can have their influencers; Sui has people of influence.Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple was a reference for Sui’s fall collection, as were the first editions of Virginia Woolf. She filtered these through her own fashion origin story, adding ’90s grunge stylings and a soundtrack stacked with hits by Sonic Youth, the Breeders, Smashing Pumpkins, and Elastica. It’s always a history lesson at Sui’s shows, but this season her mash-ups were particularly multi-layered, the orange tweed of a kilt conjuring the 1960s and the fleece of the Fair Isle patterns evoking the gorpcore-y here-and-now.Sui is a vintage hunter par excellence; if she’s erasing and eliding timestamps, that doesn’t mean she’s not fully aware of the roots of each and every one of her prints and silhouettes. She also happens to be a keen student of street style, and her recent observations—of young men wearing babushkas, and of young everyone wearing vintage—influenced the styling of this collection. That started with the souvenir scarves that accessorized many of the looks, and included the hand-dyed retro slips by Eveliina, a vintage lingerie dealer she’s met on the circuit, that she mixed with her own designs.When Sui had her store on Greene Street, she kept a rail of vintage pieces in stock. She’s recently added a selection of Eveliina’s lingerie one-of-a-kinds to her e-commerce site, alongside archival pieces from her own past collections. Her trick is the way she makes even the most direct of references feel wantably au courant. This season the looks at the top of the list are a panné velvet Bloomsbury-blue flower print jacket and skirt worn with a Lurex rugby stripe tee, and a transparent paillette embroidered net tank paired with silver sequin pants that mesh the 1920s and the 2020s. The crowd seemed slow to disperse after the show, as if everyone was reluctant to step off Sui’s time machine.
11 February 2024
Anna Sui found herself drawn to undersea creatures and watery environments. “I think it was all the coverage of the reef bleaching,” she said backstage. “I’m not an activist or anything like that, but I’ve just never seen anything more beautiful than the Great Barrier. So I think it’s important to make a statement now.” Given the state of things, New York Fashion Week has been strangely short on statements climatological, social, or otherwise, so credit to Sui for reminding us that we just lived through the hottest summer ever recorded. Hurricane Lee, which is now threatening the Eastern seaboard, became one of just 40 Category 5 storms since 1924 to swirl through the Atlantic.As Sui admitted, she’s not in the habit of delivering message collections, and had she not spoken about this summer’s ocean heat backstage before the show, it wouldn’t have been obvious that it was on her mind. This collection, like all of Sui’s work, was informed by deep research. She watched and fell in love withMy Octopus Teacher, pinned illustrations of mermaids to her studio wall, and reimagined vintage pieces with sea themes, then let those references inform her fabric development. Textiles rippled with color, shimmered with the iridescence of mother-of-pearl, and dripped with water-droplet paillettes. There was a lot of variation, but when the models lined up on the stage at the end of the show, they formed a complementary ecosystem, just like our precious and imperiled reefs.If that’s pushing the metaphor, Sui isn’t afraid of wearing her intentions on her sleeve. She showed adorable chunky pastel cardigans knitted with fishes, and backstage pointed to a T-shirt featuring a mermaid chatting with a school of fish. Her program notes, for anybody so moved, included a link tomissionblue.org, which works to raise public awareness and support for a worldwide network of marine-protected areas.
10 September 2023
Every visit to Anna Sui’s studio is a fashion lesson. This season, she was offering instruction in the kebaya, a traditional garment, part-shirt/part-jacket and often embroidered, worn by women in Southeast Asia that, you could argue, hasn’t been co-opted by western designers as regularly as the cheongsam or kimono. A pair of vintage kebayas in delicate and beautiful cotton voile were one of Sui’s references this season. A wall of her office was pinned with other inspirations: a Peranakan bowl in electric pastels (like “Chinese porcelain on acid,” she said), Impressionist paintings, and Danielle Bhavya Winter’s dreamy digital images of butterflies.Together, all of this translated into a resort collection that skewed youthful and whimsical in trademark Sui fashion. After connecting with Winter, Sui printed her butterflies on a thigh-scraping metal mesh dress. Other party dresses were equally abbreviated and came trimmed with feather hems. A silver foil sleeveless jacket and mini were inspired by a gold version that Linda Evangelista wore on the designer’s runway in her supermodel heyday.Lately Sui has been tapping into Gen Z’s anemoia for the 1990s and early ’00s. Here, she slipped baby tees under slip dresses and cut cargo pants to slouch off the hips in ways that will be recognizable to people old enough to actually remember those years.A burnout velvet smock dress in a floral evocative of Monet’s Giverny is shown in the lookbook with a vest whose patchwork effect was achieved, Sui marveled, by computer. That’s one thing that’s different between fashion now and fashion then. Sui’s gift as a fashion savant is imbuing her vintage obsessions with a universal appeal. Years from now when someone stumbles across her silk jacquard nightgown embellished with “aged” lace, they’re likely to be just as jazzed as she was this week about those antique kebayas.
7 June 2023
The location was Heaven Can Wait, a club in the East Village, but the vibe Anna Sui was channeling tonight was the Peppermint Lounge. She stumbled across an old snapshot of her friend Jane Holzer dancing there in Chanel couture in the 1960s recently and was riveted. The Peppermint Lounge was an Italian restaurant on West 45th Street that was briefly the hottest club in the world. The Ronettes and the Beach Boys played there and the Beatles stopped by on their first trip to the US. Wikipedia says that Jackie Kennedy was such a fan that she arranged for a pop-up Peppermint Lounge to be set up in the White House.Backstage Sui explained the long lost club’s hold on her. “I feel like this generation is missing out on that intimacy of having a place to go and dance. Where you don’t have your phones, and you’re just checking each other out and getting dressed up for each other,” she said. “I love the whole idea. It’s human.”The best part of an Anna Sui show is often the history lesson that comes with it. This season, it wasn’t just the Peppermint Lounge she was hyping up, but her own past, as well. Sui has Millennial and Gen Z nieces and nephews; she knows that cohort is into the ’90s and 2000s. So sprinkled amongst the ’60s-inspired a-line shifts were crochet caps lifted from her 1993 grunge collection and bunny ear hats from another show circa 1998—“since it’s the year of the bunny, I thought, okay, let’s bring them back.” She added the rubber soled cowboy boots to the mix because she once had a pair of gold Fiorucci cowboy boots, but she lent them to Linda Ramone, and never got them back.As New York Fashion Week has gotten started, designers keep talking about the personal. Sui figures it’s because of all the pandemic-time reflection. “I’m also at a stage in my career,” she added, “where I’m asking myself, what else do I need to express? So much of the time I didn’t think about myself and thought about fantasy. And this time it just kind of all came out.” Another throwback at Sui’s show: the way the models shimmied through the crowd, making eye contact with Marc Jacobs, Sofia Coppola, and Holzer, who still wears her hair in the tease she did in that old black-and-white photo. These days, the kids don’t dance and models don’t smile. Why? At Sui’s show, both happened and we all left happier.
12 February 2023
A trio of velveteen princesses close Anna Sui’s resort 2023 lookbook. One dress you’ll know—emerald-teal with antique ribbon trim and tufts of faux fur—because it originally appeared in Sui’s fall 1998 collection and became something of an internet sensation earlier this year. The others are extensions of the theme, jewel-toned precious frocks for a modern royal.Sui is a master of remastering the past—you could say her entire brand is built on that concept. But what she’s been doing lately is reimagining her own past for a new generation of customers who missed her noughties heyday. Ssense has already reissued a capsule of some pieces that, in addition to being spotted on cool girls in Lower Manhattan and Silverlake, are being worn by the likes of Dua Lipa and Olivia Rodrigo.This season the pop stars and their fans will surely covet a lilac marabou-trimmed jacket, the fabric first used in Sui’s spring 1997 collection, or new interpretations of grunge style like a lace-inset black slip dress, black crochet pants, and illustrated baby tees. Heart printed tea dresses and separates continue the sweet streak; even at her punkiest Sui never gives up on girlishness. But pick apart the layered looks, and you’ll find sexy peignoirs and velvet swimsuits that evoke screen sirens’ boudoir attire. “You just need a velvet bathing suit, don’t you?” Sui says with a laugh at her lookbook shoot as models with lilac eyeliner—the only color Sui’s mother would let her wear as a teen—recreated “cheesy” ‘60s model group poses. That’s the Sui trick: it’s always about making the dream real, funciontalizing the fantasy. This season the reality is special, sensual, and sporty. Modern girls are in luck.
10 June 2022
Once upon a time, not so long ago—earlier this week, in fact—the internet got excited about a blue velvet princess dress with fur trim. The “drama” started when Casey Jacksonpostedthat the dress was for sale on Poshmark. The woman who designed it, Anna Sui, wrote to Jackson asking if she could acquire it. Meanwhile, its purchaser,Ashley Narcisse, posted pictures of herself in the dress, which were thenrepostedwith the question, “I mean would y’all sell it back to Anna Sui?” Memes followed, as did comments for and against either “side.” As this isn’t fiction, there really aren’t any “bad guys” in this story despite the stir it caused on Instagram. What the incident really speaks to is ’90s nostalgia, and how vintage clothes are valued both for individual expression and as historic, passdownable objects.Now, freshly added to the Vogue Runway archive, is the complete fall 1998 collection that the dress in question belongs to. And here is its origin story, as told by Sui herself.“[I remember when I was in school], for English class we were told to read a book and do a report about it. And so I readThe Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobeand wrote my book report on it. The teacher gave me an A- and wrote, ‘You are too old to be reading fairy tales.’[For fall 1998 I wanted] to do a collection inspired by fairy tales, but also inspired by all the great illustrators of the 1900s. I had seen an exhibition in London about the Victorian fairy tale illustrators [that included] Arthur Rackham and Kay Nielsen; it was the most incredible and really moving exhibition that I had seen in a long time, and I just kept looking at those pictures, so then I thought, OK, I’ll do a collection like that.Illustration by Kay Nielsen fromEast of the Sun and West of the Moon.| Photo: Alamy
8 April 2022
Anna Sui’s mind has traditionally been a lightning rod for what young people want to wear. She was right there with grunge in 1993 and cycled through scenes and vibes well into the 2010s. In the 2020s, Sui continues to look to the not-so-distant past for inspiration, but she is hitting a new stride in how she translates the obsessions of ’60s rockers, ’20s flappers, and ’90s It Girls for Gen Z and Millennial fashion obsessives. Her fall 2022 collection is her strongest marriage of retro ideas with newly popular silhouettes yet, a decadent and delightful romp through Brit Pop, Art Deco, and New Wave, all topped off with cute animal bags inspired by a ’90s original James Coviello designed for her way back when.The twee and captivating British television concert showReady Steady Go!was Sui’s starting point. With the tagline “The weekend starts here” the show was, per Sui, what young Britons would watch Friday night to get outfit inspiration for the weekend. “Everyone wanted to see what Cathy McGowan [the show’s host who rocked a pert Vidal Sassoon haircut and even more pert Mary Quant dresses] was wearing, and then they would try to make it themselves,” Sui explained at a preview in her jewel box Manhattan office. The “innocence and optimism” of that period was the true lightning Sui wanted to capture; that feeling of crushing into a theater, standing room only, and dancing with friends while the coolest new band played. She knows it well—that’s how she started off her love of fashion in Detroit.Frisky little purple tweed suits, lilac fluff-trimmed cropped cardigans, and delectable kitten heels by John Fluevog are cousins of McGowan’s ’60s originals, mashed up together to evoke the kaleidoscopic way young people style themselves today. Granny square knit suits are worn with faux fur boots by Pajar, leather coats are paired with leather ties and floral mesh, ’70s striped dresses are styled with creepers and low-slung nameplate belts like the ones you used to buy on Saint Mark’s Place in the early ’90s. There are his and hers green plaid blazers and shearlings, and one totally sequined zebra stripe halter and flare trouser set. The collection leaps from era to era, place to place, and idea to idea with a little wink. It’s a mode of designing and styling that suits Sui well—she has one of fashion’s richest encyclopedias in her mind, and rather than tether herself to a single theme, she’s doing it all. She does it well.
15 February 2022
When Ugbad Abdi stepped onto Anna Sui’s spring 2022 runway, a seatmate cheered, “Yes, bitch, these clothes are the moment!” Abdi was wearing a tropical floral mesh dress, crochet knit vest, and ankle socks with a little coordinating crochet bag. Hannah Motler’s surfer girl mesh top and strapless dress elicited an, “okay, this is what I’m talking about!” And Rebecca Longendyke’s nylon floral romper inspired a “look at that! I want it!” Personally, I’d rather like Mika Schneider’s pink meshy tee and cardigan or maybe Adut Akech’s lamé camp shirt. The message here is that Anna Sui’s sweet, quirky clothes are striking a chord with millennial and Gen Z customers who are interested in an X-Girl-meets-fashion girl look.Inspired by her travels and favorite tiki haunt, Sui’s tropical paradise show was positively filled with cute wantable things. She is always expanding her product offering, and this season, she hit almost every note, from rainbow tweed mini suits to floral board shorts to girlish prom dresses. There were even white lacy caftans that, in a cheeky wink, appeared on the runway asThe White Lotus’stitle track began to play. Shoppers will eat these pieces up as they return to stores, but if they need any inspo, Sui’s niece and actress Chase Sui Wonders was there to provide it, wearing her aunt’s clothing often with an edgy ease.The location helped lift the vibe, too. Nestled into booths at Indochine, where Sui had designed a purple St-Germain cocktail complete with palm tree straws to set the vacation mood, the audience didn’t have to work to imagine these clothes at work and play. Wouldn’t you like to be at Anna’s tiki bar, wearing a daisy chain bag and Erickson Beamon beaded brooch, kicking some neon pink John Fluevog platforms up to the sky? In the past, Sui’s shows could feel a little overdone with reference and reverence. This was the designer at her freest and most joyous, and it’s certainly about to influence a new generation of Sui girls. Another seat mate was, in fact, wearing a tank that read “I Love Anna.”
12 September 2021
There are no dead ends in Anna Sui’s world. The road of inspiration is winding and long, often spanning decades and genres. What started as a casual rewatch of the 1921 filmEnchantment, aTaming of the Shrewretelling starring Marion Davies as a snooty flapper, led Sui to the Wiener Werkstätte furniture designer Joseph Urban. Urban provided a pathway into a larger exploration of Wiener Werkstätte aesthetics and design, inspiring Sui to create her own versions of the movement’s lily-of-the-valley and windowpane prints for her resort 2022 collection. They appear in a broad range of materials, from thick lace to nylon to viscose, coloring boxy minidresses and ruched tops.For a splash of color, she pulled in a couple of majolica references and then asked Bonnie Robbins, a young designer she spotted at the New York boutique Café Forgot, to design some fun jewelry in collaboration. A baby-doll dress once worn by Madonna, with a giant black bow in the back, was reissued this season, and in a similar pop-culture vein, Sui also used a red tweed to cut her own version of Cher Horowitz’s mini suit inClueless. In some way, the story of the collection starts with a chic flapper and ends with a stylish Valley Girl.But the women who will actually be wearing these faux-fur checkerboard coats and scalloped-edge mesh leggings are probably more like Sui’s nieces. There’s Isabelle, designer of the Wiener Werkstätte–inspired borders for the look book and graphic elements for this collection, who welcomes me to the studio in a blue smock dress. Jeannie, a filmmaker who photographed the look book, arrives later on in cool, slightly flared trousers and a graphic tee. Chase is usually hanging out in a miniskirt or blazer, but she couldn’t make it to Manhattan because she’s been filming season two of her hit show,Generationon HBO Max. As a designer, Sui has always excelled at harmonizing disparate ideas, but with her trio of cool-girl nieces by her side, she’s found new ways to modernize her aesthetic for a new generation, creating the bucket hats and tight tops Gen Z loves while still filling her racks with the prairie dresses and sweet suits her older clients remember.
11 June 2021
You can always count on Anna Sui for a movie recommendation. At an appointment for her fall 2021 collection, the designer was quick to discuss the 1968 filmWonderwall. “Not the greatest movie,” she deadpans, but relevant for life right now. In the flick, a nerdy scientist lives alone in a small apartment. His life is wildly upended when a glamorous model, played by Jane Birkin, and her boyfriend move in next door and begin to host riotous parties. The professor loses himself in the fantasies of his neighbors, becoming obsessed with their swinging world. “It reminds me of life right now,” Sui says. “We are alone at home now, but we know we’ll be on the other side soon.”Escapism and fantasy are also, incidentally, some of Sui’s strongest suits. Her career is built on the ability to translate that visceral sensation wanting—needing, even!—to dress up as whimsically and carefree as the best on-screen muses, the coolest rockstar babes, and the most famed artists and models into clothing available for us mere mortals. For fall 2021, she has mashed up Birkin’s eclectic style in the film with her own late ’60s references of concert posters and the psychedelic style of The Beatles’s Apple Boutique. (The Fool, a Dutch collective that ran the Apple Boutique, costumed Wonderwall.) Set into five distinct moods, the collection brings together many of Sui’s signatures, like chiffon tea dresses, thick black lace trimming, faux-fur leopard coats, and imaginative floral prints, with a freewheeling, magpie sensibility.While the collection might read as Sui as ever, with its quirky stylings and plentiful accessories, she has actually been collaborating and expanding her Suiverse. A diverse cast of artisans and makers contributed pieces to the collection. Anna Castellano, a young designer in Europe, hand-painted several psychedelic jeans. Monika Forsberg, a London-based illustrator, provided peacock and snake graphics, as did the Spanish artist known as Golden Daze. Some artisan collaborations have carried over from last season too, with Birdie Purl hand-making grungy knits and Fellow Earthlings continuing to produce recycled acetate sunglasses with matching chains. Other collaborations are in-house, literally: Sui’s niece Olivia drew cartoon illustrations that appear on tees, another niece Isabelle made hand-beaded mask chains with a star motif.The sense of working together and taking on new points of view seems to have trickled up into Sui’s own mindset.
Her garments themselves, while still as sweet as ever, have a certain new breadth. There are crushed velvet tees and a tracksuit, cow-print deep U-neck jumpers worn with lacy blouses, and mesh ruched pieces that Sui calls “sexy.” Sexy! Did you ever think that sex appeal would factor into one of Sui’s shows in such an honest, un-campy way? It’s a delight. Women are asking more of their clothing nowadays, and they will find a lot of pieces that are both lovely and useful for whatever life has in store from Sui’s latest. As she says, “Soon we’ll join the party on the other side!” And we’ll have plenty of options to dress for it.
16 February 2021
Anna Sui will not host a fashion show this season for the first time since 1991. The lack of a runway isn’t just a sentimental loss for Sui; it’s a loss for her community. Few designers as successful and influential as she is remain so fervently committed to their colleagues and collaborators. Her show notes tend to run at least a dozen pages long, with the names of every model, maker, assistant, and friend referenced. An Anna Sui show is so often a moment of coming together and a celebration of craft and creativity it can feel a bit like a family reunion, and in fact both her own biological family and her fashion family typically line her front rows.Isolating at her beautifully appointed apartment, Sui brainstormed every possible way to make her spring 2021 collection as collaborative as possible. As usual, she found the seeds of her inspiration in a documentary, this time one about the female Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot. That connected to the Depression-era watercolors of Charles Burchfield, the washed-away colors of the 1966 Czech movieDaisies, and the simple beauty of at-home bric-a-brac. With a serene color palette of dusty rose, ivory, and pale jade, Sui did what she does best: craft wafty and whimsical housedresses and short sets in a clash of petite prints, mixing cotton voile and crepe mesh with black eyelet and organza with hand-embroidered flowers. The level of care put into each piece is as high as ever, with patchwork, quilting, embroidery, and ribbons detailing almost every item from denim shorts to the many tie-back dresses. When everything is bleak, this kind of homespun, special clothing resonates.But the magic of the collection is in the many new craftspeople Sui enlisted to help build her vision. On Instagram, she found the artist Stevie Shao, whose activist graphics appear on sweatshirts and tees. Fellow Earthlings, an eyewear company based on Prince Edward Island, made new sunglasses styles from the scraps of past seasons, marbling green, pink, and black acetate into swirling frames with granny chains. Riverside Tool & Dye in Philadelphia ice-dyed chore coats and workwear pants in lilac and blush. Birdie Purl made tote bags from recycled T-shirt yarn. Sui and her nieces and nephews spent much of self-isolation drinking Spindrift flavored seltzer; they sent their used cans to Gifted Acorn Crafts in Onalaska, Wisconsin, where they were cut up and crocheted into bucket hats.
There is even a pie, baked by Virginian artist Karen Freidt, that Freidt’s daughter drove up to New York to feature in the season’s video, directed by Sui’s niece Jeannie Sui Wonders. Chase Sui Wonders, Jeannie’s sister, designed character graphics for tees, while Isabelle Sui, another niece, has joined the family business as Anna’s new assistant.She titled the collection Heartland, a nod to the homesteaders emerging craftily from the dust bowl, but also in celebration of those nearest and dearest to her heart. The look book’s backdrop, painted as always by Sarah Oliphant, is a pink cottage with heart-shaped windows and Sui’s signature butterfly fluttering on shutters. The fashion industry is in a state of panic right now with businesses shuttering, but creativity goes on. Toward the end of a masked-up conversation at her studio, Sui wondered if maybe these new hubs of inspiration around the country—not just in New York—can be a sustainable and practical way forward. Think of it as the latest in the ever-expanding, always lovely Sui-verse.
15 September 2020
The devil is in the details—and lord, were there many to be consumed at Anna Sui’s fall 2020 show. Inspired by the languid heroines of ’70s horror films—Daughters of Darkness,Blood, andBlack Lacewere on the mood board—Sui dreamt up one of her richest, most sumptuous collections of late. It began as the lights on the runway flashedSuspiriared; the models turned in unison like possessed witches and started to glide down the runway one by one with the assured strut of Morticia Addams. It was, without question, one of the more sensual mise-en-scènes that Sui has ever created.That sensuality carried into the clothing. Sui has always been a materials obsessive, turning her custom prints into custom laces into custom sequin embroideries like a magpie M.C. Escher. Yes, some of that Bohemia remained in a few lilac prairie dresses and a print collaboration with Liberty, but when it came to styling out her looks and considering their visual impact, Sui went full vamp. In addition to her sinuous poppy andFantasia-worthy floral prints carrying through various fabrications, she also experimented with new materials and eccentric techniques. A black vinyl dress in a Victorian shape worn by Lulu Tenney had burnout velvet details on the yoke and embroidered eyelets along its hem. Sara Grace Wallerstedt’s emerald green Lurex mesh separates had fluttering lettuce edging. Yasmin Wijnaldum’s party dress was made from burnout velvet zig-zags on organza—a technique Sui had never seen before—while Issa Lish’s fully sequined jumpsuit and faux fur and shearling coat offered a high-dose of glamour that Sui’s audience has probably not seen from her since Linda was on the catwalk.With cinched waists—also rarely seen in the Sui oeuvre—and sky-high John Fluevog platforms, Sui’s models looked lethally gorgeous. Their siren beauty was accentuated by Pat McGrath’s greenish makeup, Garren’s rolled-up pouf hairstyles, and sinister hats and headpieces by James Coviello, including several with feathers shaped into devil horns. Dreams and fantasies are two themes so often associated with Sui. This season she let herself be tempted into the world of enchanted nightmares, and this evil turn is so devilishly good.
11 February 2020
Escapism is only as good as where it gets you. For several seasons now, the idea of getting away from it all has inspired fashion designers to dream up collections about Morocco, Japan, the Mediterranean, the South of France, and dozens of other seaside locales. But Anna Sui is not like the others. What was offered on her Spring 2020 runway tonight was definitely a kind of escapism, but instead of flying off to a faraway destination, Sui escaped her models to a new state of mind. No pop, no punk, no psychedelia, and no new wave here—Spring 2020, as Sui explained in a preview, was about unabashed, whimsical femininity, light as air and frothing with sweetness.Her key reference was the mid-20th-century artist Lila de Nobili. A costume designer, set designer, and illustrator, de Nobili operated with a lively hand, rendering women like fanciful poufs of cotton candy. That unbearable lightness was what Sui wanted to capture with her chiffon dresses this season, layered over pants or under vests, like a modern mille-feuille of delicious design. (Cupcakes decorated like roses and succulents were also on the mood board, to hammer home the sweet tooth plot.) Victoriana was in the mix too, taking the form of pouf-sleeved mesh tops, bitsy tanks with beaded embellishment that evoked corset covers, and one adorable chambray set trimmed with tiny bows. The best dress by Sui’s own measure—and mine—was a mash-up of pale pink and blue prints collaged into a long tunic. It was so irresistibly breathy that as Felice Noordhoff walked, you couldn’t help but think it might just waft away.Even with their platform shoes and quirky socks, Sui’s women still felt confident, aggressive, and sure-shot this season. Her product offering remained as diverse as ever, too. In addition to the lovely seafoam caftans and ethereal broderie anglaise minis, Sui whipped up coated chiffon windbreakers in delicate prints and tomboy-ish khakis and army jackets. Picnic blanket ginghams, rich neon-flecked tweeds, and checked knitwear fleshed out the full scope of the Sui world this season.At a preview, Sui admitted that her decidedly delicate theme was a challenge, calling Spring an “exercise for me to change the headspace.” It might be a challenge to women too; I don’t mean that as a bad thing.
Set to the bluesy crooning of artists as diverse as Jessica Pratt and Blind Faith, this collection asked questions about contradiction: how to simultaneously be layered and light, how to feel protected and practical while still utterly free, how to be completely yourself and completely at ease in the world. There’s no simple answer, but Sui and her earthbound ethereality posited some great ideas.
9 September 2019
As a passionate historian of pop culture and design, Anna Sui is willing to give almost every artistic movement a chance. Except Memphis. At an appointment in her lavender-colored studio with its jet furnishings and stained glass door, Sui admitted that Memphis was just never really her thing. And so she set herself up with a challenge for Resort 2020: Put the Sui spin on the boldest, and possibly most bizarre design movement of the ’80s. Research into Memphis’s key figures led Sui to a palette of Pop colors—azure, jade, bright coral—that, as a New Wave regular at the Mudd Club, were familiar to Sui from Fiorucci adverts and MTV graphics. So there was her bridge.In the collection, the Maripol-does-Memphis spirit came through in color-blocked maxi dresses, metallic shirred minis, and a delightfully funky flame print cut into windbreakers, blouses, and floppy little dresses. Most exciting—other than Sui’s custom prints and luxe fabrications that are always top notch—is the sheer variety of silhouette offered this season. There are dinette dresses in black-and-white florals; grandpa cardigans designed with Sui’s logo; vinyl car coats; sweeping robes; lace-trimmed tee dresses; a very alluring ‘70s minidress with tiered bell sleeves and an almost Gunne Sax–inspired belt at the waist. In the Sui-verse there is something for everyone, even an aspiring Heather in a boyish plaid blazer. With simple styling, this collection is a to-the-point testament to the breadth of Sui’s vision—and a testament to the fact that with a little dove-shaped lace or lip-and-heart pattern, anything can be Sui-fied. Thank heavens for that.
10 June 2019
There is a common parlance in the Garment District, where Anna Sui has maintained her studio since she started her operation in the late ’80s, that refers to the fashion business as the “rag trade.” Sui might have built an ample empire, but hers is the dream trade above all else. She christened her Fall 2019 collection “Poptimism,” taking guests at her runway show on a romp through the saturated secondary colors of early ’60s concert posters, tweely posh dress-up clothing, and a soundtrack that mashed up Nico and Snail Mail.This Pop-optimistic mood was the latest in Sui’s multi-season journey to find a calm from the storm of the world. For Fall, she painted a topsy-turvy picture of the early ’60s, with short little dresses in shades more shocking than Schiap pink, and models in technicolor wigs inspired by Anna Karina’s wedding day bouffant. Color was a big story, with Sui pulling electric tones from the work of Verner Panton, Mary Blair, and David Weidman. There were strange granny-dress mash-ups of knits and silks; resplendent faux-fur coats with matching shaggy hats; an acid green feather-trimmed brocade suit; and plenty of cocktail frocks and jumpsuits so heavily beaded that the models klickity-klacked as they strutted the runway. Sui’s intense research leaves no surface unconsidered, but this season she may have outdone herself by having her custom crepe patterns made into rich brocades, so you can swaddle yourself in her winding blooms no matter the vibe.What purpose do these sweet, swinging ’60s things have now? It’s a rejection of the casual, a celebration of capital-Ddressing. If Sui’s longtime friend Marc Jacobs is bringing back proportions and poufs, Sui is making equally as dreamy clothes for day. In 53 exits there might have been one or to two puffers and a sole nylon windbreaker, but be certain, this collection was about the ceremony of fashion, the way a full-on proper outfit can change your life.Sui would know. The concert poster backdrop was a page pulled from her own history. Growing up in the Detroit area, she was too young to get into the Grande Ballroom, so she had an older friend collect show bills designed by Carl Lundgren and Gary Grimshaw for her. Those local legends provided the posters for tonight’s show. Her references aren’t just things to stick on a mood board—they are the story of herself. In her life and career, she has gone from a Detroit dreamer to one of New York’s most lasting fashion stars.
That is the promise of her clothing: Just put it on and you can be like Anna; you can make your dreams come true.
12 February 2019
Marc Jacobs’s grunge show for Perry Ellisis the one that gets remembered—it did get him fired, after all. But Jacobs wasn’t the only designer looking to the Seattle music scene at the Spring 1993 collections. Less hyped but also important were the New York shows ofChristian Francis RothandAnna Sui.Roth, whose muse that season was Sonic Youth front woman Kim Gordon, says he wasn’t surprised by the overlap. In a recent phone conversation he recalled running into Jacobs at a party long before the start of the season. They were both wearing flannel shirts, the symbol of the sound and an anomaly in each of their closets. Grunge was happening.But though they shared commonalities like a mix-and-mismatch aesthetic, Dr. Martens, and stripes—lots of stripes—the shows were anything but interchangeable. In a neat postshow sound bite, Jacobs summed up his somewhat boho designs as a “hippied romantic version of punk.” A fair assessment: There were Birkenstocks among the Docs. Sui’s take on the style—what she calls “a mix of thrift shop, army surplus, and active sportswear”—was a bit more glam, partly because of her supermodel lineup and partly thanks to the sparkly makeup and colorful club shoes. Roth, in contrast, cast non-marquee models and sent them down a sod-covered runway wearing laminated backstage passes strung on pull chains borrowed from the boyfriend of one of his employees.Looking back now, it’s hard to see what the outrage was all about. To 2015 eyes, the collections in question hardly look grungy at all. But at the time, the fact that the clothes mimicked flea market finds was seen as dangerous: Why would the customer go to an upscale boutique if she could find the “real” thing elsewhere for a whole lot less? Then there were those who felt that fashion had co-opted a subculture for its own use. But that’s not how it felt on the inside, at least not to Sui. “To me it’s a perfectly normal progression,” she says. “Isn’t that always what happens when youth culture is absorbed into mainstream fashion?”
31 August 2015
Anna Sui does not do trends. Most profiles of the independent designer, who’s cut a path against the grain of mainstream fashion for 30 years, will include the phrasesui generis. Yes, it’s a clever pun and a statement of Sui’s unflinching spirit, but for Spring 2019, she offered something more than just the unique: the universal. There’s no pun for that, just the reality of Sui’s most approachable, relatable, necessary collection to date.She was inspired, as always, by a niche reference that then gave birth to millions more. The ground zero in this case wasKismet, the 1955 movie with an epic grand bazaar scene. Within Spring Studios, Sui erected her own grand bazaar in the center of the runway tonight, with her favorite makers lined up in a rich tableau set designed by Jerry Schwartz. Erickson Beamon was set up with its golden earrings beside The Falls’s beaded vintage wares. There were discharged dyed shirts from Brass Arrow and sexy, ’70s-esque leather pieces from South Paradiso Leather—all for sale. When the show started, models entered the space from every end, Gigi, Bella, Taylor, and Kiki thumbing Dailola’s indigo shibori dyed scarves and Nomad Vintage’s Indian caftans before taking proper runway turns.But a Sui show is never just one thing. The shopping bazaar led Sui to explore ideas of transporting fantasies, because wouldn’t you rather be anywhere but here? So there were caftans worn with gem-laden shell jewelry by Karen Erickson that evoked the haute leisure of Shangri-La or Marianne Faithfull’s Shell Cottage. There were glinting separates in iridescent palettes that turned models into mermaids. Soo Joo Park swished by in a ’40s-shaped pale blue frock with ombré fringe; Rianne Van Rompaey strutted in a glam rock brocade suit and Hawaiian-print shirtdress; and Lexi Boling passed by wearing a sporty nylon jumpsuit in a forest green tropical motif. The mishmash effect played out expertly—now is a magpie-like moment where board shorts need bucket hats that need fanny packs that need socks that need to be paired with snake-print Teva sandals. Dilone’s shimmering green gown with a thigh-high slit, Sui said, was something a woman in her office wanted to wear while walking her dog and doing her errands, dressing down be damned.This sort of irony, though, is not Sui’s intention nor should it be the only takeaway from her show.
Instead, with these myriad references, Sui proved that a fringed shirt–wearing cowgirl is not so different from a bathing bombshell beauty or a sequin-laden showgirl. Here’s the universality of her message. We all love a fantasy and we all have a reality—and on the runway tonight both were cut, literally, from the same cloth. Let’s call it aSuitopia.
11 September 2018
If you fall into the realm of the currently-under-40 fashion obsessed, Anna Sui was probably your first entrée into the world of capital-F Fashion. Her purple store, her supermodel friends, her limitless knowledge of history and culture and style—woo-hoo! For so many of us devoted clotheshorses, Sui is the ultimate inspiration and ultimate obsession.With her Resort collection, the designer is hoping to recapture that magic of really, truly, madly, deeply loving fashion. The way she tells it, having pieces you really adore is more important now, in a time of fast fashion and elevated basics, than ever before. So she’s dug into her archive and found the styles that, to her and her customers, have been long-standing favorites and remade them. Her iconic Spring 1994 ballerina print, designed by Jeffrey Fulvimari, is back, the dancers’ delicate frames splashed across a black minidress or a Sui purple chiffon blouse. A dress Linda Evangelista wore in the early ’90s has been redone with bejeweled buttons, as has the black baby doll dress with white ruffle trim that Sui once wore in Rome to celebrate Valentino’s 30th anniversary. (You can see a photo of her wearing it, arm in arm with Evangelista, onInstagram.)Sui also added more of the prints and fabrics that are like candy to fashion lovers, such as leopard spots in gray and lilac, mod heart motifs complemented by heart-shaped lace, and a scrumptiously cute ’30s-inspired cherry pattern on a teal bowling shirtdress.What Sui has done with this excellent Resort collection is create a range that is at once 100 percent her and 100 percent of the moment. Fans old and new will be pleased.
7 June 2018
Anna Sui is fashion’s biggest fan. Growing up in Detroit, she would obsess over pictures inSeventeenandMademoisellemagazines in her bedroom, images that she has saved to this day and that appear on her Fall 2018 mood board. For all that’s changed since then, her obsessive love of fashion, design, illustration, and music remains. No matter how famous or successful she has become, or how famous and successful her friends are—many of whom sat in her front row today—she still retains that youthful quality of really, passionately, deeply admiring and loving something. And so she titled her new collection Beloved, because it’s about the fashion world she “dreamed about before I came to New York.”That was the world of the couturiers, of the prim and put-together ’60s, before Sui’s much-referenced bohemians kick-started the counterculture movement and took over fashion. As she parsed the pieces in her showroom during a preview, Sui explained that the collection was really about the joy of getting dressed up, not in the splashy glam-rock ’80s way she’s referenced before, but in the staid tradition of those couturiers, when clients would watch part of a runway show in the morning and return hours later, in black tie, for the evening selection. The only difference on today’s runway was that instead of matching their clutches to their shoes, Sui’s models wore coordinating vegetable-tanned leather fanny packs that matched their lace-up boots and platform oxfords by Bed Stü.Which is to say that for all the runway traditions Sui referenced this time around, including Gigi and Bella Hadid opening the show together with a very posh strut and twirl, the designer couldn’t help but inject the collection with some Mudd Club–era glam. Yasmin Wijnaldum arrived, hips swiveling down the catwalk, in a groovy velvet suit shot with a coral and violet pattern. Underneath an apron dress, Sara Grace Wallerstedt wore a bright red and pink ruffled blouse dotted with rhinestones. Adut Akech came out in a two-toned faux fur shearling coat in a shade of cyan that could remind you, if you were paying attention to Sui’s296-image-deep mood board, of Anya Phillips’s electric eyeshadow.But wait—there’s more! As part of a partnership with Levi’s, Sui created some incredibly wearable corduroy trousers and blazers. Her trans-seasonal collaboration with James Coviello birthed a sweet embroidered tunic.
There was also a Lurex-trimmed knit dress and cardigan combo in Kelly green; a floral faux fur coat; glitter sunglasses; polo maxi dresses; brocades; lace; and one mint green gown with rose-colored beading at the neck, worn by Bella Hadid to close the show, that Sui wants to get on the red carpet, but I’d like to see on a modern bride. This collection was heavy on clothes. In the past, the worst thing you could say about the designer was that she could really stick to a theme, but today her lineup ranged far and wide, producing daywear, eveningwear, and everything in between.Will people wear it? Maybe, maybe not. Something about the harsh lighting of Spring Studios made Sui’s rich vision seem slightly filled in. At a time when fashion is constantly questioning its purpose, witnessing its own superfan reflect on her own fantasies, referencing everyone from Norman Norell to the obscure illustrator Anne Marie Burden in the process, this show was really a delight. But perhaps Sui would benefit from challenging her own runway format. With everyone changing venues, the fashion flock would certainly follow her to the spaces she loves, rich with history no doubt, around the city. After all these years, after all the admiration she’s poured on fashion, the industry has become a big fan of Anna Sui, too.
12 February 2018
Listen, nobody does it like Anna Sui. She laser-cuts through the past, pulling references together for a beautiful collage that is at once nostalgic, modern, and a bit kooky. The biggest grudge you can hold against her is that she’s more of a historian than a forward thinker, but to reduce her whimsy to so basic a complaint is to do her the ultimate injustice. In a season where resurrecting old ghosts is becoming par for the course, Sui’s reinterpretations of the past are unparalleled—and especially this time around. For Spring 2018, her references were more far-reaching than usual: She started with the Brontë sisters, which she picked up from a Masterpiece drama about them, but quickly shifted gears to the Summer of Love when she saw the “Counter-Couture” exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Into that disparate mix went a couple of print-based love letters to London—where Sui hosted her first retrospective exhibition—and some reference-less iridescent dresses and sheer layering pieces. It was more of a mélange of times and places than your typical Sui show, which can adhere devotedly to a theme. In that way, it felt refreshingly appropriate for today’s little-of-this, little-of-that world.In her studio a couple of days before the show, Sui explained that in addition to her historical references, she was also thinking about the state of retail. As she gestured to her trays of feather-laced Erickson Beamon necklaces and vegetable-tanned Bed Stü leather boots, she said that she believes when you walk into a store, you deserve to feel transported into a world of treasures. Her Prince-purple store in New York has always felt that way, but now more than ever she has turned an eye to the granular details of shopping. See: the vintage Levi’s one of her studio team members hand-painted with psychedelic motifs or the tie-dyed denim cutoffs worn by Jamie Bochert that exposed a sliver of her derriere as she passed. A girl with no clue about the wonders of Sui-land would love those. Ditto for the discharge-print bodysuits made by Noël Bennetto’s Brass Arrow label. One was a thong—a thong!—worn underneath a sheer skirt. Whether intentionally or not, this Sui collection had a sexiness about it that others have not. Maybe she has picked up on the things her go-to models Gigi and Bella Hadid wear off-duty.
Whatever the reason, you have to admit there is something delightfully coy about the fact that Birgit Kos’s fringed top was completely backless or that Julia Cumming’s girly floral dress was see-through and worn sans bra.But wait, there’s more. In addition to being whimsical, salable, and increasingly sexy, Sui’s late-’60s romp was also extremely practical. Silhouettes were loose and forgiving—toss it on and go!—and the layering pieces that can sometimes feel like afterthoughts were easier to pull off than ever, like the blouson tie-front shirt on Liu Wen or Dilone’s Victorian-sleeved jacket. The fact that it was shown on a diverse cast of women, from Maggie Rizer to Taylor Hill to Natalie Aoki, only added to the wide appeal this collection will have. But let’s not end on a practical note, okay? That’s a little boring for something so dreamy. So this: As models wearing sunglasses with flowers etched into the lenses passed, Small Faces’s “Itchycoo Park” rang out with the apt lyric “It’s all too beautiful,” and the Beatles’s “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” soundtracked the finale. With all the badness, sourness, and evil in the world, how lovely it would be to see life through Sui’s kaleidoscope eyes.
12 September 2017
Somewhere between signing off on an encyclopedic monograph and staging a massive retrospective exhibition in London, Anna Sui found time to design one of her most focused collections to date. Her jumping-off points for Resort 2018 were the otherworldly photographs Sarah Moon, Deborah Turbeville, and Guy Bourdin shot in the ’70s, namely Moon’s Cacharel campaigns and Bourdin’s pictures for Charles Jourdan. Their evocative colors and ethereal dream girls set up the palette and spirit of the collection. Rich eggplant, azure, black, rust, and a delicate beige lent a moody quality to nostalgic dresses and layering pieces such as geometric lace shorts, sheer star-print robe coats, and wide-leg pants that work on their own or under a tunic dress.What made Resort feel like more than just a string of vintage-tinged hits was the vastness of the prints and the mashed-up way they were styled together. A big cabbage rose–print skirt was paired with a fairy intarsia crop top, the way a modern Sui girl might style her pieces. Another dress combined a shooting star, a full moon, and swirling ribbon patterns, topped off with a swingy asymmetric hem. Sui left no stone unturned with her fabrics, meaning the tiny cupids, stars, and swallows that appear boldly on frocks made cameos in lace trimmings and as patches. The repetition and consistency of motifs will give customers something to pore over and play with when the clothes hit stores.
8 June 2017
Opening this Friday at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London is“The World of Anna Sui.”The show, the first retrospective of an American designer in that city, will chart Sui’s New York career. In 1991, 11 years after setting up her own business, having cut her teeth designing for junior labels on Seventh Avenue, and freelance styling for her friend Steven Meisel, the designer was persuaded to stage her first runway show, which introduced her singular world to a larger audience.Sui’s universe, colored purple and black (her signature colors), is an enticing one in which rock rules and fun and romance are served up in large doses. “My clothes are about nostalgia and memories of my own childhood,” Sui has said. Filtered through her lens, vintage inspirations from the mainstream (surfers, festival girls, dandies) to the obscure (Lady Diana Cooper) become have-to-have of-the-moment looks for an artsy, adventurous, fashion-loving customer. In 1992,Voguedubbed Sui “the darling of downtown fashion,” and the accuracy of this description has been reinforced in every one of her front rows. Sofia Coppola, Matt Dillon, Adam Clayton, and Anthony Kiedis were among those in the audience when Sui presented her Spring 1994 show during New York Fashion Week.“I wanted to work with punk iconography, but re-colored into a more optimistic palette,” says Sui of this spring outing, which was more eclectic than the preceding Fall collection, with its crushed velvets and references to 19th-century dandies. Men in dresses continued the grunge story Sui told forSpring ‘93. Also on the runway were metallics, Peruvian-style knits, and Cleopatra and Dolly Head T-shirts, illustrated, respectively, by Terror and Michael Economy. (The latter was responsible for Deee-Lite’sGroove Is in the Heartalbum cover art.)Linda Evangelista opened, wearing a fuzzy panda-bear-head hat by longtime Sui collaborator James Coviello. From there the show—featuring some impromptu moonwalking from modelsEve Salvailand Donovan Leitch—crescendoed to an unforgettable finale. Linda, Naomi, and Christy (who had her hair cut into bangs by Garren backstage) brought down the house in flirty, whitebaby doll dressesaccessorized by bow-tied shoes and ankle socks plus wooden cake-shaped bags decorated with plaster by Cupcake Cafe. Completing their looks were marabou-trimmed tiaras in pastel colors. “Innocence looks very fresh to me,” Sui toldVogueat the time.
“The world is so hard, we need something that’s a relief from reality.” No one knows better than this designer that girls just want to have fun.
24 May 2017
Let’s not mince words: Anna Sui’s show yesterday was an absolute delight. In a season in which relaxed, understated ease and bold political proclamations are becoming the norm, Sui continued to do what she does best, serving up a richly diverse visual feast on the catwalk. Her inspiration this time around began with a biography of Elsa Schiaparelli, whose influence was felt in trompe l’oeil knits and a shocking pink faux fur. Simultaneously, the designer became immersed in the work of interior designer Elsie de Wolfe, who designed the post-show party for Schiaparelli’s 1938 Circus collection, as well as a mirrored home for Countess Dorothy di Frasso in Beverly Hills (also home to Marlene Dietrich for many years). Sui was also watching the ’40s filmBlithe Spirit, which led her to imbue many pieces with an acid-y phosphorescence meant to mirror the pallor of star Kay Hammond. Truthfully, it doesn’t do a critic well to try to neatly connect the dots between Sui’s inspirations and her clothing—the way she mashes up her many references is a singular skill that seems innate and above logical explanation.But if I might get back to Schiap for a minute—Sui and Schiap are not too dissimilar. They’re both deeply creative, able to make complicated design concepts seem easy as pie, and run with a crowd of artists who define the decades they live in. That last bit is where the real spirit of this collection came through. These are looks intended for a glamorous night, partying after dark with the style-setters of the world. For Schiap, that meant café society events with Dalí, Cocteau, and the Duchess of Windsor; for Sui, it’s Meisel, Jacobs, Enninful, and Naomi Campbell. Green iridescence was a major theme, adding a lovely glimmer to emerald and gold dresses and giving Janice Alida’s deep eggplant number a witchy sheen. Furs, both faux and real, were another big story on the catwalk, with many models draping them over their shoulders like bygone screen sirens. Moody florals and pagoda prints gave Sui’s many looks dimension—and will be bait for the shoppers who love her line—as did the removable ruffs and cuffs styled with most looks. Some of the best accessories were the thick belts cinched around models’ waists, making sure that, in Sui’s mélange of colors and prints, the girls could still retain a slinky shape. It will also be hard to wait until mid-summer to buy a velvet jacket with Schiap-like beading, but the loyal will happily pass the time.
What’s more is that, perhaps as a response to the recent underwhelming nature ofNew York Fashion Week, interest in Sui seems to only be growing. This reviewer was positively crammed into her seat, spotting more people in attendance than ever before. It’s worth noting that while other American designers are decamping overseas or shifting to more exclusive presentations, Sui has never failed to stage a fantastical runway show on the penultimate day of New York Fashion Week. She’s also been a champion for the Garment District, raised money for the Bowery Mission, and made concerted efforts to help the victims of global tragedies—which is to say that she’s a kind person, who, it was agreed upon in a car after the show with other journalists, happens to also be one of the nicest people in fashion. In May, an exhibition of her decades-spanning career will bow at London’s Fashion and Textile Museum; around the same time, Abrams’s is releasing a companion book. Pray that it brings a Sui renaissance stateside. She really is one of our best.
16 February 2017
In May of next year,Anna Suiwill have a retrospective of her illustrious career at London’s Fashion & Textile Museum; a forthcoming companion book from Abrams is in the works, too. Those events (and, likely, her recent reissue capsule withOpening Ceremony) have set the designer on a deep dive through her iconic archive. This season, rather than simply sending out a lineup full of her own codes, Sui found herself mulling over her identity as an American designer with a lineup she dubbed Miss American Pie.It was, in effect, a romp through many of the aesthetic highs of our country—maybe a particularly noble effort on the eve of a nail-biting election cycle; a little well-placed optimism. A viewing of the American Folk Art Museum’s recent “Mystery and Benevolence” offered a look back at the rich, even cryptic iconography of the Masons and Odd Fellows societies, which Sui here commingled, to seamless effect, with visuals from sundry other eras. Those shadowy fraternities boasted some fittingly enigmatic motifs—eyes, hands, hearts, and stars; Sui whipped them into a hardy jacquard inspired by Pennsylvania Dutch coverlets—gorgeous in a dark-wash denim jacket with lace sleeves.Elsewhere were all manner of quintessentially American things, invoking lush, stylistic time travel through the Old West to ’50s sock hops and beyond. There were sweet, small-town prom queen A-line frocks, lacy, puff-sleeved prairie dresses, a square dancing set edged in kitschy, metallic bric-a-brac—even cheerleaders kitted out all in cherry red and electric blue (another varsity-inflected hit of tonight’s show was a fringed, letterman-Western jacket hybrid). Souvenir handkerchief prints were a particular standout; pick from a juicy Florida number, or a high Deco New York, New York version. Bella Hadid looked like a particularly vampy Loretta Lynn sporting an afghan print gown and Western fringed leather capelet, beehive coif towering high. Sui even summoned the heavy-lidded, peroxide blond spirit of Jean Harlow with a ’30s-inflected boudoir dressing story. The designer’s billowy peignoirs came frothy with marabou trim and flecks of Lurex.It bears noting that long beforeVetementswas packing multiple collaborations into a single runway show, Sui was busy tapping plenty of brands she loved to create pieces for collections which famously included a cornucopia of different influences.
Today’s outing boasted baubles by Erickson Beamon; chapeaux and crochet with friend and longtime collaborator James Coviello; hand-tooled Western purses from Carving Tribes; kicks by Hush Puppies, Emma Hope, Old Gringo Boots,andFitFlop; and leather wares courtesy of cultish L.A. creator South Paradiso Leather (a favorite of Sui’s pal Linda Ramone, to boot). All the collaborators lent an added dimension to the rich Sui universe. The sum of all these many parts was what continues to be one of the most infectiously joyful shows of New York Fashion Week.
15 September 2016
In the midst of preparations for a couple of to-be-announced projects in 2017 (stay tuned . . .),Anna Suihas been revisiting her own archive. She’s not the only one, of course—just last month, Opening Ceremony reissued a smattering of pieces from Sui’s iconic Grunge and Punk collections. Sui put grunge—timelier than ever—to work for her again this season with a 1940s-spiked lineup, brimming over with the cornucopic prints and the darling dresses she has made her name on. Pattern, as ever, was a visual feast. The designer name-checked Schiaparelli, and indeed, there was a palpable bit of the surrealist doyenne in Sui’s terrific trompe l’oeil ruffles. The collection’s individual parts were ultra-feminine—lace bibs and inset trims—but often worked to tomboyish effect. Crinkled plaid baby dolls and sweet frocks with hook and eye closures down the front all spoke to the reasons Sui's Grunge collection remains among fashion's most iconic nearly three decades later. Those baby dolls will find a whole new generation of fans when they hit retailers later this year.
10 June 2016
Could tonight have markedAnna Sui’s swingingest show in recent memory? The designer never wants for groovy inspiration, but this season it was especially palpable. For a collection that she dubbed “Pop-sydelic,” Sui set about marrying Carnaby Street style at its zenith with the saturated pop drama of artists like Richard Lindner, Tadanori Yokoo, Peter Blake (he behind the cover ofSgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), and the electric milieu of Robert “Groovy Bob” Fraser’s London gallery. Sui’s overflowing moodboards could be, in and of themselves, the subject of some engrossing retrospective, and a trip to her studio earlier this week found Fall’s boards in particularly heady form. Here was the Technicolor, pow-pow fantasia of the aforementioned, mixed with ephemera of its time (“Story of a girl in a fur-skin rug,” read one newspaper clipping referring to poor Marianne Faithfull at the Stones’ infamous Redlands bust). Then there was the work of Niki de Saint Phalle, the French artist behind Tuscany’s hypnotic Tarot Garden, and the Nanas—multi-hued, zaftig dancing women.On the runway, that imagery was every bit as impactful as it sounds. Sui sent forth gorgeous, jewel-toned velvets—seemingly by the bolt—baby-doll dresses, tie-dyes, and deliciously trippy jacquards. Outerwear was a major coup. Anna Cleveland looked every bit the part in her aubergine, Mongolian-trimmed number, and elsewhere was a killer “faux-skunk real fur.” Most stunning, and shaggiest, was a Mongolian and goat hair topper with full sleeves and a high neckline—one of many Edwardian hallmarks here, of the sort that was so beloved of brands like Granny Takes a Trip and Mr. Fish. De Saint Phalle turned up in an homage to the Little Lord Fauntleroy get-up she donned for a 1968Voguespread, and in the penultimate look, Jamie Bochert’s Nana-printed lacy frock.The legendary Barbara Hulanicki, sitting front row tonight, contributed a dolly girl design that recalled her leggy Biba illustrations. Post-show, she called out Sui’s preternatural knack for mixing patterns better than damn near any designer in the business, and you’d have been hard-pressed to argue with her there. Hearts, stars, kitty cats, devore blooms, and landscapes, all commingled to playfully dreamy effect, to the dulcet sounds of Jeff Beck’s “Hi-Ho Silver Lining. “You’re everywhere and nowhere, baby, that’s where you’re at,” he intones, “going down a bumpy hillside in your hippie hat.
” Sui’s creations tonight surely transported—and provided some hippie hats to boot, crocheted with felted animal motifs courtesy of longtime pal James Coviello.
18 February 2016
The penultimate day of the New York show sprint and who among us isn’t in need of a visit to some far-flung, beachy locale? That’s just whatAnna Suiserved up tonight, albeit only a stone’s throw from the fracas of an assembled many awaiting another iconoclast (the lady Madge) over at Madison Square Garden.Prompted by a recent getaway of her own to Tahiti and Honolulu, Sui riffed on pop’s long-standing affair with island life, from the ’30s starlet Dorothy Lamour, to Elvis’s trinity of Hawaiian movies, to David Bailey’s shot of a bronzed, sun-soaked Marie Helvin. Even Jane Campion’s high-minded New Zealand period pieceThe Pianomade the cut in the form of a little subtly placed Victoriana.Sui’s tendency toward an almost magpie-like archivist’s eye remains one of her more defining and compelling characteristics. In addition to the above references, she looked at sailors’ valentines (the intricate seashell artworks), and even lifted a phrase from the 1941 Gary Cooper vehicleBall of Fire: “killer diller,” the choice slang of Barbara Stanwyck’s lippy nightclub performer, Sugarpuss O’Shea, came embroidered across the back of a top.Indeed, today’s Honolulu honeys embodied all the best parts of kitsch: its color, its humor, its play. Bowling shirts and souvenir jackets came to new life in Sui’s hands; the latter enjoyed a major revival last season, but even if they were downrightdu monde, you’d be hard-pressed to argue with Sui’s take, lushly beaded with lurid-looking sunsets and pinup mermaids. Elsewhere was a dreamy marabou-trimmed peignoir that seemed to have dropped straight out of a Bunny Yeager snap and onto the palm tree–dotted catwalk. It all made for a deliciously heightened version of the tourist tat of another era.And what of the prints? Sui enlisted the fabled Zandra Rhodes to create a custom pattern, a delightful seashell number (Gigi Hadid very memorably donned a scarlet sarong in it). One Lurex-drenched, undersea chiffon—with angel fishes and all—was a real winner. Sui also sent out an octopus intarsia, and board shorts crafted from a heady-looking butterfly lace.Even as fashion continues to ride high on a wave of heavy minimalism (though a sea change is surely in the works), Sui is a designer who serves as a vivid testimony to the power of well-deployed profusion. Today’s was the kind of blissful, high-energy romp to assist even the most fatigued among us—socks and sandals optional.
16 September 2015
The key to Anna Sui's look is her constant juggling of cultural references—a madcap mixing of diverse styles and time periods. For Fall, Sui's stylistic collage includes graphic, two-tone wool knit jackets and mod shift-dresses, layers of tweed piled upon each other, colorful pop floral shirts with matching ties and patent-leather motorcycle jackets.Sui struck a chord with her vision of a modern-day Carnaby Street dandy: Glittery pants, beaded paisley shirts and long, mixed-weave coats made you want to stay out all night. Her wide-wale corduroy pants, long military coats and black velvet strapless dresses with voluminous skirts proved that she can make quieter statements as well. Things got a bit out of control with pirate hats, metallic leather coats and multicolor patchwork numbers, but some would argue that over-the-top attitude has always been a part of Sui's allure.
13 February 2001
For a designer like Anna Sui, the current '70s boho trend is a gimme. It's a look she can turn out, in varying iterations, without breaking a sweat—as evidenced in her Resort collection. The easy, engineered print dresses, floral maxi skirts, cropped flares, and kimono-style coats and dresses were predictable coming from Sui, but these are the kinds of things her customer is going to be looking for come November, and the designer nailed the vintage vibe perfectly. Her folksy, William Morris-esque prints were particularly appealing, and her short embroidered organza dresses were just the right mix of grungy and sweet. There's an art to making retro-ish clothes look fresher than stuff scavenged out of a thrift shop bin; Sui is an expert at that, with a particular knack for the subtle, canny update. Her inventive prints, for instance, served to contemporize this lineup, and so, too, details like a little asymmetry here or a bit of lace or smocking there. The difficult-to-capture quality of these wares, though, was their attitude: There was an insouciance in this collection that made it feel modern, and a versatility to pieces like her throw-on dresses that resonates with the way women dress now. Sui's clothes this season looked easy. That's not an easy thing to pull off.
3 June 2015
You only need to look at her designs to know that Anna Sui's mind works in strange and wonderful ways. After falling in love withVikings, the History Channel's swords-sex-and-shearling spectacular, she made a typically lateral leap to the mid-century Scandi-design that reshaped the world in its image: the wallpapers, the fabrics, the furniture that decorated a million suburban homes, Sui's own family's included. The collection that emerged from this crucible of creativity comfortably embraced both worlds, as surreal as that sounds.So some of the models sported Inuit face tattoos, and many of them had tresses as wild and tousled as any Viking princess', courtesy of a special shampoo that hairdresser Garren had given them to use before the show. "It makes their hair look like it's only ever been rinsed in a stream," he said. That same untamed quality was echoed in the shearling trim on a gilded jacket; or the electric blue Mongolian lamb that hemmed a black velvet parka; or the shaggy jackets and gilets, again in deep-dyed Mongolian lamb. Sui designed a coat of multicolored mink scraps. She also knitted a gilet from fox scraps. Both pieces added to the collection's pagan underpinning. So did the pony-skin boots by Frye. And Jamie Bochert made an exquisite Valkyrie when she closed the show in a knitted Viking helmet and a "silver celestial sequin dress" under an embroidered fake fur cape.During a preview the other day, Sui mentioned that it's prints people expect from her. She's certainly never let anyone down in that respect, but the 30 she showed tonight should make them happier than ever. Sui printed on chiffon, on dévoré, on fake fur, and on an utterly gorgeous lamé skirt, which, paired with an embroidered wool jacket, was as much of a standout look as Gigi Hadid's ivory lace ensemble. She also made prints of folkloric tapestries, needlework, and crochet, and then over-embroidered them to add dimensionality.There was so muchworkin the collection, so much love and care, that it was no surprise Sui's fans were gushing backstage. She continues to be New York's greatest unsung fashion heroine, but why stop at New York? In a dream world, there'd be a Gucci or a Pucci suitor in her future.
18 February 2015
Anna Sui's latest collection felt like the one she was destined to design. It stitched together—literally—a grab bag of her obsessions: London in its most fruitful late-'60s flowering, arts nouveau and deco, hippie, glam, star-crossed lovers Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg swapping clothes, defining eras….Kosmik Rock Star was Sui's own label for this journey to the center of her mind, and sparkling, celestial space was the broad stage on which she mounted her extravaganza.Sui's research is unparalleled in fashion. It's a wonder what you can find on eBay. Like the vintage Sanderson linens that were at one time cut into a jacket for George Harrison. Or the jackets that Mick Jagger's brother Chris hand-painted for John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix. Or the psychedelic posters designed by Nigel Weymouth, whose boutique, Granny Takes a Trip, was ground zero for Sui's Spring collection. "In that period, that was what everyone had to wear," she said. What designer wouldn't wish to claim such authority in our own uncertain times? Sui set about re-creating Weymouth's world as she imagined it was. Antique prints excavated on eBay—Biba-like motifs of Pierrots, cats, kewpie dolls, a man in the moon—were reproduced. Terry de Havilland, English shoemaker of legend, was commissioned to remake his most famous footwear, with motifs of clouds, rainbows, and lightning bolts. Here were Keith's sunglasses, and there was an iridescent cape and matching pants that Pallenberg, the most satanic majesty of them all, would have sported.What saved this trawl through the past from being an exercise in fashion necrophilia was a) Sui's ardor and b) her genius at styling (that is, after all, how she started out in fashion). Passion persuades. Sui loves what she does as much as life itself. It shows. But she also has the smarts to compose a convincing story out of the components she creates. If her boys and girls spun down the catwalk in a lyrical cloud of shine and light, there was a distinctly modern attitude in the volumes and proportions.And another thing: Sui and her majordomo, Thomas Miller, have been out in Bushwick looking at the psychedelic street art and coming to the conclusion that there is an idealistic groundswell, "something other than the super-modernist, minimal thing," as she put it. That is, after all, how the Pre-Raphaelites came into being, as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. People, there's change afoot.
10 September 2014
Anna Sui is a collector. An idea gatherer, an accumulator of aesthetics, a lover of things. This season found her very much in collector mode, showing off some of her best-loved, tried-and-true themes. Indeed, there was even an illustrated print here based on "Anna's favorite things," riffing on her hoard of stuff at home. Insofar as there was a concept galvanizing this collection, that was it. Really, though, the idea was pretty much this: make flattering, easy-to-wear clothes with a certain romantic vintage appeal. For the most part, the vintage reference was Art Deco, the Sui stock-in-trade, and the clothes were dresses, the bedrock of her business. A short, bias-cut number with fluttery sleeves, shown in a green-tinged print and in gold, effectively summed up that vibe. But there were other good pieces beyond the dresses—the kimono jackets had a ton of appeal, as did the loose, caftan-style tops and the varsity knits inspired by collegiate prep of the forties and fifties. Sui was in magpie mode; her influences were hardly monogamous to one era. She also created some lovely embroidered organza looks redolent of Victoriana, and a terrific button-down maxi dress, shown with matching tap shorts, that would have looked right at home in the early seventies. There were plenty more ideas in this collection, too—four deliveries' worth, each group distinctively crowded with engaging prints and flea-market influences. Piece by piece and as a whole, it was very Anna Sui.
3 June 2014
Given that she's a designer who has always loved decoration and embellishment, it's odd that Anna Sui has never checked China as an inspiration. Maybe she was waiting till she found an appropriately arcane reference point. Which, for Fall 2014, she did. Anna May Wong was the first Chinese-American movie star, a queen of the silent movie era who managed the transition to talkies. She was a figurehead of fiercely fashionable chinoiserie in the 1920s. And there are at least three elements in that statement that meant Wong was catnip to Sui.First, chinoiserie: the color scheme, the prints, the languid lines. Next, the twenties, Art Deco and all, an era whose glamour and geometry Sui has been hot-wired into since she launched her career. Finally, fierceness: the bold conviction that has always driven Sui forward, irrespective of trend and taste in the broader fashion market. All power to her for that. But this particular collection demanded particular recognition.There's always a central story with Sui, but it's never the only thing going on. Here, for instance, Anna May Wong was the fulcrum, but Sui had also been reading Anjelica Huston's autobio, and, taking on board the anecdote about Huston's mom sending Irish tweeds to Coco Chanel to be run up into outfits, Sui made her own tweed pieces à la Coco. She was also fascinated by the regional American design movement called Pueblo Deco, which mixed highly compatible Navajo and Art Deco elements. That made its graphic way into the collection. In other words, layer upon layer of inspirations shaped Sui's Fall, and the innate compatibility of notions that were separated by place and time helped to make this presentation one of her strongest in recent memory.
11 February 2014
The Pre-Raphaelites were Victorian England's rock stars: poets, painters, and lotus-eating romantics who exalted beauty in the face of the gray uniformity of the Industrial Revolution. Unsurprisingly, the rock stars of another century were drawn to them. In game-changing boutiques like Granny Takes a Trip, London's gilded youth bought into the languor and luxury of the Pre-Raphaelite legend. Jimmy Page did more than that—he acquired the tapestries created by Pre-Raph top gun Edward Burne-Jones. When Anna Sui saw them in the Tate's Pre-Raphaelite retrospective at the beginning of this year, she knew she'd found her inspiration for Spring 2014.That's the way Anna rolls, layering epiphanies from her own life in her collections, such as falling in love with the way Masai men draped fabric round their bodies when she took her nieces and nephews on safari at the start of the summer. And a few months later, when she was in Indonesia, finding herself mesmerized by the crowns worn by Balinese dancers. Those elements were stirred together with the Pre-Raphaelite inspiration and a Victoriana-meets-Venice Beach Boardwalk vibe to create a typical Sui stew of upbeat, irresistible idiosyncrasy.Knowing none of that, you might have assumed you were seeing a parade of the haute-est hippie chic. Alia Penner's backdrop was inspired by the artwork of The Fool, the psychedelic design collective in the sixties who painted Eric Clapton's guitar, John Lennon's piano, and George Harrison's Mini. True, that acid-spiked sensibility infected the collection's window dressing: Butterfly sunglasses and Erickson Beamon's butterfly jewelry, hair wreathed in flowers, and even the sunburst design on a linen hoodie felt mighty appropriate for a sun-drenched free concert in Hyde Park circa '69. But Anna is a much cannier magpie than that. Her attention to detail is inspiring—minutely researched but never so literal as to weigh her down. Today, it was clearest in her prints and fabric treatments, like the metallic jacquarded chiffons that she'd created to duplicate the mysterious iridescence of Burne-Jones' paintings. The lightness of her touch was also obvious in the way that the men on her catwalk—rare but welcome visitors to the world of Sui—sported tees with giant silver stars, more Mr. Freedom than Granny Takes a Trip. Meanwhile, the women floated by in crochets and chiffons as airy as a dream. Beauty exalted, indeed.
10 September 2013
"I'm crazy about conversational prints. It's just in the air," said Anna Sui. And with that, she ushered in an era of cute. Sweetness has always been the norm for her frilly, lace-loving, boho girls, but this season's prints—of bubbles, hearts, birds, and so on—were giddier than usual. It could have gone saccharine, but Sui keeps her colors cool, undercut with grays and blacks, so prints like a new one of apples and strawberries, done in cream, black, and purple, didn't grate. (Each one also had its own custom lace, and many had matching intarsia knits. There's dedication to the theme.) "Resort is always great because you can have fun with it," Sui opined. In an age when a lot of people's idea of a good time is viewing online cat videos, the designer threw in a feline print, too. "All your cat needs satisfied here," she promised.
4 June 2013
Detroit-teen Anna Sui's first date was toOne Plus One, Jean-Luc Godard's movie about the Rolling Stones' recording session for "Sympathy for the Devil." She hated it. Years later, when she was one of the young stalwarts of the Mudd Club, the monochrome look of Godard's nouvelle vague classics, likeBande à part, and the sloe-eyed intensity of his muse Anna Karina were an inspiration for Sui's crowd of artists, musicians, and filmmakers, but she still couldn't bring herself to see the actual movies. Until last Thanksgiving, when Godard's enduring modernity finally clicked for Sui. "We work the same way," she says. "Everything you come across you throw into the mix."But that hardly gives full credit to the fierce discipline and eagle eye for detail that are essential assets for Sui when she sets about re-envisioning a cultural crush moment from her past. They're what allow her to mash a pell-mell overload of colors, textures, patterns, and accessories into a coherent whole. That creative process was in full effect in Sui's show tonight, with a whole lot of help from Garren's high ponytail, Pat McGrath's cat-eye makeup, and Frederic Sanchez's soundtrack of yé-yé French pop from the sixties. Sui's details caught the flavor of the period: thejeune fillejumper dress, the boy-watcher sunglasses, the colored tights and loafers, the kneesocks, the shift and matching helmet in Courrèges-daisy-embroidered organza. And the best example: Karlie Kloss, first on the catwalk, in a skirt, waistcoat, and jacket that were actually a trompe l'oeil one-piece that zipped up the back, just like in the olden days when the all-in-one was a cost-effective fashion solution for cash-strapped go-girls.Yes, Sui is probably contemporary fashion's most lovable archaeologist, but simple historicism can turn on a dime into a leaden nostalgia-fest. What continually steers her to safety is the fact that every collection is, in some way, the consummation of a youthful fantasy for her. You know that this is what she imagined being a fashion designer would be like when she was aVogue-obsessed kid in Michigan. And that is the ultimately convincing quality that seeps off her catwalk. Like today, when it felt like the long road fromOne Plus Oneto Aymeline Valade as Anna Karina for the twenty-first century completed a circle for Sui. The single regret is that she didn't stick to her original intention to make a collection that was as monochrome as her Godardian inspiration.
So peerless a colorist is she that a body quivers with anticipation at the thought of where a world of black and white might take her.
12 February 2013
There are few designers who weave autobiography into their collections as effectively as Anna Sui. The gloss of her show tonight was the work of the French interior-decorating legend Madeleine Castaing—chintzes, shades of blue, leopard as a base—but the guts were Sui's own years as a habitué of London's and New York's punk underworlds. The connection between the two was chaos. Castaing loved the style of the Second Empire in France, the mid-nineteenth-century period that followed the chaos of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic upheaval. Chaos and late-1970s punk? Goes without saying.It might read as fiercely academic on paper (and the whole subject is, in fact, about to be the focus of the Met Costume Institute's next extravaganza), but when Karlie Kloss opened Sui's show in a zippered, brocade, Clash-meets-Castaing jumpsuit, the designer's internal logic started to make raw physical sense. Her love of vintage casts her as a dyed-in-the-wool romantic, but there are few youth cults as riven by romance as punk, so Sui was simply bringing about a union that was written in rock 'n' roll's stars. Her touchstone was the late Mirielle Cervenka, sister of singer Exene, whose effortless blend of Victoriana and ripped-and-torn was one of Sui's early inspirations. What said that better than a lace cape scored with rose-gold zippers? Or a floral chintz dress layered over cropped, multi-zipped pants?When people write books or make music in this style, it's called steampunk. But this show's punk aspect was ultimately less significant than Sui's own ardent attachment to the spirit of idiosyncratic style. A biker jacket in neoprene, a jaunty hat shaped after cat ears, a contoured chambray dress dripping with pearls…none of that wasnecessary, but all of it was irresistible.
11 September 2012
Anna Sui called her Resort collection "Anna's Garden." At first glance, it looks like Classic Sui, but look closely at the richly colored Art Nouveau prints she favors, and the blossoms are all there. The question becomes how to make a trope as tried-and-true as florals into something special. Sui succeeded by customizing every blossom and bud. It's an old story that Anna custom-designs and -engineers each of her many prints in house, but this time, she did the same for every bit of flowered guipure lace, eyelet, and jacquard. While color remains a constant, there were pretty, antique lace pieces in white too, the sort of item that explains why Sui has a sizable bridal business. And among the flowers, a few plainer looks managed to stand out, like a chambray tunic dress decorated with a few sweet, scattered blooms.
6 June 2012
Anna Sui could spin you a story about how she wove the web of inspiration for her latest collection: the Todd Oldham book about textile designer Alexander Girard, the valentine cards illustrators Walter and Naiad Einsel sent each other every year, the commercial art of Fellini favorite John Alcorn, the caftans Elizabeth Taylor wore in her campiest seventies glory days. The go-go girls onShindig! But all of that enlightenment would ultimately be surplus to needs, because the clothes Sui showed told their own story, as upbeat and literally transporting as anyone could hope for from fashion at a time when the world craves reminders of enchantment.Like Marc Jacobs' show the other night, Sui's presentation honed in on the fantasy of fashion. It's scarcely a new impulse with her, but what elevated the collection this time was an extraordinary precision and polish. The detail was off the map, as in a "librarian" dress with a print of books, trimmed in a lace in the same book pattern (made in New Jersey; Sui is, after all, New York fashion's locavore equivalent). Or a print that featured postcards with the addresses of all the Sui stores around the world. Or a smock whose bodice was dressed with laser-cut Plexi butterflies.A handcrafted owl appliqué was the kind of folkloric touch Sui excels at—it was attached to a velvet varsity jacket over brown corduroy short shorts for a look that popped like Twiggy. But it was the spirit of Jean Shrimpton in her early sixties heyday that guided the glittery plaid shift topped by a matching coat and paired with kitten heels. And, of course, the mighty Liz, invoked in Lily Donaldson's gilded chiffon caftan with intense orange capris.What could seem like fashion historicism in lesser hands was translated by Sui's sheer passion and eye for detail into something seductively of the here and now. To step from New York streets crowded with men and women in anonymously dun-colored coats and puffas into Sui's world of extravagant color, print, and texture was to be welcomed into a universe of possibilities. If only the universe would say yes to the invitations.
14 February 2012
Anna Sui was glowing before, during, and after her show. Whatever anyone else might think about what she'd done, she'd made one of her own fantasies come true. The spirit of fashion is reinvention, and Sui built her collection around an unsung but powerfully transformative moment in fashion's history: that time in the early seventies when illustrator Antonio Lopez moved from New York to Paris with a coterie of gorgeous young things—Donna Jordan, Jane Forth, a 16-year-old Jerry Hall, baby Grace Jones—whose suitcases of vintage clothing and taste in dance music turned the heads of Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld, among the many Parisians who were seduced by the new arrivals. Their HQ was a nightspot called Club Sept, which impressionable Anna got to visit on her first trip to Paris, and it was the club's atmosphere that she set out to evoke.From the second Karen Elson hit the catwalk—turbaned torrent of curls, fitted forties-style dress wrapped in a marabou chubby, glittery spectator pumps, lips as lacquered as a Chinese cabinet—we were transported to a playful, optimistic era when the pursuit of pleasure was a career opportunity for girls like Hall, who was discovered dancing at Club Sept with feathers glued to her forehead. In that anything-goes spirit, Sui offered a playsuit with an Art Deco toothbrush print and a cap-sleeve, peplumed, flared-pant outfit in a print that looked like Liberty, but was actually tiny frolicking fairies. In the audience was modeling superagent Marilyn Gauthier, who remembered wearing nothing but lacy lingerie to Club Sept.Here, the look was duplicated in Sui's black tulle kimono floating over silken tap shorts, as appropriate for a twenty-first-century Black Dahlia as it was for glamorous club kids in Paris 40 years ago. And that's the secret of Sui's success. Yes, the looks ring retro, but they are cut and colored for a modern woman whose yen for the beauty and fantasy of fashion transcends mere trend."I'm not trying to fit in with what's going on," Sui said before her show. "I had to do whatIwanted." Fact is, she may be ahead of the curve on this one. There are a slew of Antonio books on the horizon. Can a film be far behind? Here, at least, is the wardrobe.
13 September 2011
The young guns are going mad for eye-popping prints in mix-and-match array. But don't bother telling that to Anna Sui. She's been doing it for years, and she did it once again for Resort in a collection that was inspired by the interiors at legendary decorator David Hicks' Paris shop. The silhouettes, too, will be familiar to Sui fans: forties-style frocks, peasant-style tunic tops, and empire-waist maxi dresses, in floral, Pop, and Deco prints. In addition to reprises of old hits (the cherry print that was a favorite last Resort is back as a full fruit bowl), there were a few new forays (like a great lace safari jacket or a series of Lurex knits). But all in all, it's all very Anna; this much-loved designer doesn't bother to chase fads. That said, the fact that current trends are aligning with Sui's way of doing things could bring fresh eyes to her work.
7 June 2011
TheBallets Russesexhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London was so seductive, it was merely a matter of minutes before it reconfigured itself as a designer influence. The fact that Anna Sui was the first to surrender only consolidates her situation as a cultural weather vane. But, being Anna, she was also mesmerized by London's proto-It girls the Ormsby-Gore sisters, who, in the late sixties, bought Ballets Russes costumes at a Sotheby's auction and wore them day and night. This confluence of folklore, fantasy, social history, and nonconformist glamour gave Sui's collection the kind of depth that clearly makes her work so impenetrable to the rest of the New York fashion world that she thrives in her own unique bubble. And this collection was exactly that—a beautiful bubble.Sui said she'd been craving a different kind of energy from fashion, so she massed her models on the catwalk, just like Gianni Versace did when he wanted to make a supermodel statement. Sui didn't have that caliber of model today, but she did make a persuasively strongfashionstatement. Her colors and prints were bold enough to be subversive in an environment that favors the safe monochrome. For instance, there was the absinthe green, which Sui lifted from Ballets Russes designer Léon Bakst and matched with an Art Deco purple in a butterfly-winged jacquard on a cape. Bakst was also the inspiration for the gilding on Coco Rocha's camouflage parka.For Sui, the Ormsby-Gores stood for one of fashion's key transitional moments—when London's precise mod chic rolled into luxe hippie glamour. That glistening, camo mod-to-glam parka encapsulated the transition. The rest of the collection swung backward and forward between the two poles: a neat little navy shorts suit versus a floating, poppy-printed smock dress. A shift decked with white camellias was Sui's way of reminding us that Chanel designed for the Ballets Russes. Where would we be without that?
15 February 2011
Anna Sui is celebrating the 20th birthday of her business and, as the new tome that marks the milestone shows, she has been utterly true to her vision from day one. Her collection today included the baby doll dresses, the handkerchief-hemmed skirts, and the print mixes that have always been part of her work. But the heart of the issue was, as always, Sui's ability to build an extraordinary mythology around her story for the season.She citedDays of Heaven, the Terrence Malick movie from 1978 that is one of her favorites. From it, she extrapolated a dusty, sun-faded world of pioneer women, which led her on to Joni Mitchell and the girls of Laurel Canyon in late-sixties L.A. Sui is in love with the artisanal, so there was a strong feel for the human touch in hand-crocheted sweaters, waistcoats crafted from granny squares, and cross-stitch embroidery. But these solid, homespun pieces were paired with floaty chiffons and antique lace. "I've always loved Anna's girls, because they look so dreamy," said Bruce Weber in the front row.True enough: It was the one time during fashion week when the 16-year-old models who have swarmed the catwalk actually looked their age—and all the prettier for it. Sui momentarily cut the sweetness with a group of vampish black outfits, the kind you'd imagine Joni and her girlfriends finding in vintage clothing stores in Hollywood way back when. Then she ended the show with a group from her bridal range: Lily Donaldson in linen-toned tulle patterned in gold beads, her head wreathed in gold leaves and wheat sheaves. No lovelier way for the designer to close the book on her first two decades in business.
14 September 2010
"Everything is really romantic and dreamy this season," Anna Sui said at her showroom. "It's much sweeter than Fall." Or, to put it in terms of Sui's beloved musical references, maybe we could say Resort is more Beatles than Stones. The designer turned out long ruffled peasant dresses, lace-trimmed bed jackets, and velvet burn-out tea dresses with flutter sleeves in a palette of dusty pinks, pale blues, and sea foam greens. Prints were mostly a variation on florals—there were roses, nosegays, and posies—but a cheeky cherry print (paired with a matching oversize brooch) stood out. It had a fanciful element that suits Sui and the season.
7 June 2010
One of the many joys of an Anna Sui collection is the intro it gives you to worlds you know nothing about. This season's show was a passport to the American Arts and Crafts movement of the late nineteenth century, bleeding into the Art Nouveau that has been Sui's default position for years. I'd never heard of the furniture designer Charles Rohlfs, but Sui could produce a weighty coffee-table book devoted to his work. As it was, she designed an embroidery based on a Rohlfs' chest of drawers, which Agyness Deyn wore in the show. That sounds academic, which is totally selling short the straightforward pleasure in fashion that animates Sui's work. She may very well wear her influences—Biba dolly birds, Rolling Stones girlfriends—on her bell-shaped sleeves, but every season she brings a fierce-some amount of research to bear on prints, fabrics, and the decorative elements that give her clothes a distinctive richness. Here, it was the dévoré on the stained-glass border of a dress or jacket or the gold pomegranate design printed over a floral jacquard. Sui hunted down the place where Roycroft tiles were manufactured during the Arts and Crafts years and had them reproduced to be used as pendants (the Erickson Beamon jewelry in the collection was outstanding). The swirling Art Nouveau patterns on a little twill dress were duplicated in its accompanying tights—as Biba a moment as a revivalist could wish for.But if the mood of these clothes was vintage bordering on antique, the overall impression was curiously un-retro. That's because Sui, who once worked as Steven Meisel's stylist, knows how to weigh the whimsy: a flat boot, a big cable-knit cardie, or a fur bolero helped to make her most hippie-princess looks real-world-ready. And, because the backroom boys and girls don't always get their due, it's past time to credit Pat McGrath's makeup, Garren's hair, and Frederic Sanchez's music. At some point in the future, those elements will all be part of the most wonderful museum exhibition on New York's most underrated designer.
16 February 2010
Fresh off her CFDA Lifetime Achievement Award and a collaboration with Target, Anna Sui is steadfastly in center ring—and it was clear from her stellar circus-themed Spring fling that she's comfortable there. "I'm always about optimism and exuberance. It's what I feel about fashion," said the designer a few days before taking her show on the road.The clothes were pure big-tent Anna Sui, with lots of references to the Pop sixties—the designer's Valhalla. Models wore Mary Quant's Sassoon cut, or were transformed into latter-day Jean Shrimptons with flowered head scarves and shifts printed with circus animals, paisley, or apples. There were also ringmaster's jackets, Liberty patterns recolored "à la Anna Sui," and lots more tomboyish looks than usual. Blame that on Rex Harrison: Sui had been watching the 1967 version ofDoctor Doolittle, and it must have really struck a chord because the tailored pieces—a flowered pantsuit on Ranya Mordanova, a voodoo-beaded denim shorts suit worn with a paillette-embroidered mesh dress—had a cool sixties-take-on-Victorian-menswear feel. (Vests never looked so good.)
15 September 2009
According to the program notes, soon to be CFDA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Anna Sui's Resort collection is "a gift of love that Anna gives to all her fans around the world." Translation: lots of signature summer clothes but no organizing principle. Freshest to the eye was a ruffled trench and Sui's downtown take on the tuxedo jacket.
1 June 2009
"If you're going to have a show, then havea show," said Anna Sui, gearing up in her office about a week before her Belle Époque extravaganza. It was obvious how much the designer—happy among her stacks of books, inspiration boards, and piles of 1890's-inspired jewelry from Erickson Beamon—enjoyed the process. Not that Sui wasn't mindful of the economy. She noted that she had made careful fabric choices to ensure that everything remained at a comfortable price point. But Sui, and the girl she dresses, does like to have fun. As front-row guest Taylor Momsen, an ideal member of the Sui demographic, put it: She has "a different kind of spark."What lit Sui's imagination was Proust and the Paris of the Gay Nineties. She looked at pictures of itsgrandes horizontalesand its art, as well as of Yves Saint Laurent's country retreat, where every room was named after a character inRemembrance of Things Past. The research resulted in a demimondaine's boudoir vibe (rose prints and velvet trims) with accents of more sober Rive Droite propriety (black velvet and soutache trim).There was a lot of black—enlivened by lots of pattern, naturally—in a collection that was overlong and not without its heavy-handed moments. There was also a splashy saffron cardigan with rhinestone trim, a relatively tame brushed-wool plaid coat for the fainter of heart, and some great boots. It will be hard to decide between the colorful over-the-knee style and Sui's amazingly chic challenge to the Ugg boot. Way to kick it, Anna.
17 February 2009
As rents up and down Seventh Avenue become more expensive, clothing manufacturers are getting pushed out. If the "Save the Garment Center" T-shirt Anna Sui put in her goody bag—what, no free hairstyling products?—and wore to take her bow don't do much to stem the problem, her Spring collection, with all of its beading and appliqué work, might just keep a few factories in business. Sui took inspiration from the way that textile designer, shopkeeper, and New York Mexican restaurant pioneer Alexander Girard and his doll-maker friend Marilyn Neuhart made the folkloric modern. "Their work was very colorful, optimistic, and happy, which is what I'm pushing these days," Sui said.The parade of shift dresses, rompers, and peasant tops worn with kicky skirts had a vaguely south-of-the-border feel—think rosebud embroideries, rickrack borders, and fringe detailing. But as usual, there was plenty more in Sui's madcap mix to catch the eye, including astrology prints, a detour into Spanish toreador mode, studded gladiator sandals, and some of the grooviest costume jewelry (made by Erickson Beamon) in a season of groovy costume jewelry. If it didn't put a smile on your face, you weren't paying attention.
9 September 2008
"More is more" best describes Sui's latest Resort collection, in which choice somewhat bested focus. Psychedelia was evoked by the designer's mad mixes of prints, everything from flowers and paisleys to marble and Venetian paper to snakeskin and fairies. Batiks, calicos, shibori, and tie-dyes added a further exotic element, ensuring that the magpie nomads who are Sui's fans will have plenty to rummage through.
3 June 2008
Backstage, Anna Sui ticked off her references: the aesthetic movement, pre-Raphaelites, Tiffany vases, Fortuny pleats, medievalism, Gustav Klimt, and, oh, yes, the American Indians of the Pacific Northwest. A beautiful mess? To some, maybe. But to her fans, watching the new and different ways she loops together her encyclopedic appreciation of fashion history each season is nothing less than a pure delight. With its iridescent prints, lively color combinations, and Art Nouveau-ish embroideries—to say nothing of the tooled-leather boots, velvet flower headpieces, beaded necklaces, and paisley tights—her Fall collection ranks among her most exuberant.In no particular order, she showed a stained-glass bird-motif smock worn over a totem pole-print top, a white faux-suede fringed dress, a metallic lamé space-dyed cape, a multi-print caftan edged in python lamé, a curly lamb coat in ultramarine, and a black-and-cream Tibetan goat capelet. The cumulative effect? Very late sixties. "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" was playing on the sound system, and somewhere the Beatles' guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who died earlier this week at the age of 91, was smiling.
5 February 2008
A fashion mash-up artist of boundless enthusiasm, Anna Sui picked Busby Berkeley musicals and Biba as her Spring influences. Mixed together, they produced one of her most dressed-up collections in seasons: all acid-bright sequins, neon prints, and silvery feathers. Adding to the fun was a chorus line of models in short punky wigs or Manic Panic streaks, wearing platform sandals à la Terry de Havilland.The show began with high-waist shorts and a tie-front blouse topped by a net bolero that evoked Jean Harlow. Next was a glen-plaid jumpsuit worn with a matching jacket and a print top that was pure Barbara Hulanicki. An eclectic parade of nail-head embroidered boleros and bathing suits, color-blocked matte jersey frocks, and striped chiffon onesies followed. By the end there were showgirl dresses in mesh decorated with metallic paillettes and plumes. If the sheer numbers didn't seem very wearable, Sui balanced them with an extensive array of little silk shirtwaist dresses with puff sleeves and hems ending several sexy inches above the knee. How does it all fit in with the rest of the season? With the seventies quickly becoming a recurrent motif, Sui's show looked on the money.
9 September 2007
Resort bloomed with paisley and Ossie Clark-inspired prints, if not bright color, at Anna Sui. There was a lot of black, including some pieces in velvet that were appliquéd with seventies-style graphics in muted teal. Sui focused on dresses, the kind that could easily be layered over leggings or a cropped pant.
28 June 2007
Were those curtain swags decorating the hem of a minidress? As a matter of fact, yes. Backstage at her show, Anna Sui explained that she began working on Fall by looking at pre-Pop Andy Warhol and other commercial artists, and that afterward she became interested in interiors. "I put all of my favorite objects into the prints," she said. So, bits of furniture decorated a silk charmeuse dress, newspaper print showed up on a crepe de chine number, and wool knits came appliquéd with sewing notions.As a concept, Victorian chairs aren't as compelling as, say, Marie Antoinette at a New York Dolls concert (one theme from last season). And as a collection, it didn't have the same spunk as some of Sui's earlier efforts. But there's always something to like in the designer's magpie piles of coats, sweaters, and frocks. Lacquered-silk anoraks layered under smocks or jumpers gave the show a sportier than usual edge. A pair of black lace party dresses—worn, in keeping with the trend, over fitted turtlenecks—looked like winners. And her silver-fox patchwork coat was so chic that even those furniture tassels could be forgiven.
6 February 2007
The New York Dolls. Marie Antoinette. Suleiman the Magnificent. Leave it to Anna Sui to take these wildly divergent influences and come up with something that not only holds together, but also jibes with the season's key trends. She had white in the form of an eyelet A-line frock; she had short, full skirts made poufy with underlayers of net; and she had prints. Tonight they ranged from Turkish-carpet motifs to florals (red roses, mostly) to novelties. Those were toddlers at play on the hem of a shirtdress.Nicely subverting all that pretty, though, were torn fishnets on the legs and arms, a tie-front top that exposed the better part of a model's torso, and zebra-print knickers, along with tunes by Bow Wow Wow. The group's teen singer Annabella Lwin was the starting point for Pat McGrath's makeup, and you could see echoes of her style in a silk jumper dress, among other looks, as well as in the show's Napoleon hats. Sui may be one of New York's more established designers now, but you can still rely on her for a new wave fix.
12 September 2006
Anna Sui is fashion's consummate magpie, borrowing bits from here, pieces from there, but putting them all together as only she can. For fall, she sampled mostly from the sixties. There was a trace ofSgt. Pepperin a navy wool cardigan with brass closures, the patterned shirtdresses with white collars and cuffs brought to mind Catherine Deneuve inBelle de Jour, and the shifts cut from crocheted tablecloth suggested the pixie Mia Farrow. We've seen all this before from Sui, maybe more than once. But what surprised this time around was how pared-down and grown-up the collection felt. She's been known to scatter a pile of trompe l'oeil chains on a gauze dress. But when it's the real thing? Just one will do nicely, thank you.Sui's girls are usually accessorized to the hilt, and there were a few fab wheelies in a carpetbagger velvet print, but some models hit the runway sans belt, bag, or hat. The lack of add-ons allowed for closer inspection of the clothes themselves, and this season there were some knockouts. An iridescent midnight-blue wrap dress puffed out below the waist, right on trend. Equally of the moment were a striped wool jacket and knickers worn with a ruffle-front ivory blouse. Meanwhile, Sui's metallic Jacquard dress will make you wish for the days, not so long ago, when boho was the biggest thing.
7 February 2006
For spring, Anna Sui stole a page from theGazette du Bon Ton,the collectible early twentieth-century French magazine that published illustrations of the Deco era's top fashions. Many designers have focused on the surface treatments of designer Paul Poiret and his contemporaries this season, but Sui opted to concentrate on his uncorseted, loosened-up silhouettes and lovely, painterly prints.She sent out a stream of fluid dresses in butterfly stripes and leaf motifs, waffle plaids and every kind of floral. Silhouettes ranged from baby doll to granny, with waistlines below the bust or dropped down to the hips, and there were handkerchief hems aplenty. In case you didn't make the connection, she accessorized most looks with that flapper favorite, a long ropey necklace trimmed with a tassel. After dark, those twenties babies loved their sequins, and Sui had them in spades, studding mesh tunics, tap pants, and Naomi Campbell's tank dress finale in eye-catching geometric arrangements.
13 September 2005
Anna Sui's muse for fall was Louise Nevelson, a member of the junk-art movement whose found-object sculptures are an apt metaphor for Sui's own design sensibility. A pasticheuse of the top order, she layered a pile of chunky gold chains and a foot-high fur toque on top of an Empire-waist connect-the-dot-print dress worn with fishnets and midheel loafers. And that was just for starters. An eclectic parade of menswear fabrics, butterfly prints, and metallic lamé followed.Nevelson was at her peak in the late sixties, a period Sui has mined for inspiration many times before, and a few of the looks in this show have become signatures of sorts for the designer: the mumsy bouclé suit, the chiffon baby doll smock, the librarian's bow blouse. Into the mix, Sui tossed era-appropriate bandanas knotted underneath the chin, opaque op-art tights, and pendant necklaces, as well as some up-to-the-second strappy fur boots. Put together, it all made for one head-spinning collage.
8 February 2005
Anna Sui often pegs her collections to a certain era: In recent seasons, she's spun through on hippie chic, mod style, and moody, sixties-era Biba girls. This season, Sui drew on the rich romance of the American West in the late nineteenth century, plucking bits and pieces from cowboys, Indians, settlers, soldiers, and (in a more modern moment) rhinestone-bedecked rodeo girls. "With all the interest in Victoriana right now, it makes sense to look to what was going on in our country," Sui said. "This is what was happening here."Sui always puts on a good show: The soundtrack is carefully chosen (this season, those New Romantic admirers of the Old West, Adam and the Ants, figured large). And every exit is an outfit, with appropriate accessories: for instance, a cropped denim jacket over a pintucked voile dress, with an embroidered petticoat underneath, all wrapped with a silver conch belt and accessorized with scrunched cowboy boots and a scruffy hat. At first, that comes across as costumey; take it apart, though, and you see why Sui is a veteran favorite of the downtown, rock 'n' roll crowd. All the trends are there, but confidently Sui-ified: loose, light frocks in vintage-looking floral prints, sweet voile pintucked blouses, full petticoat skirts with lots of embroidery, stylish cropped jackets, and an Empire-waist top with ribbon tie. The prairie never looked so good.
12 September 2004
One of the things that makes Anna Sui’s show a Fashion Week crowd-pleaser is that she always seems to be having fun. She plays great rock ‘n’ roll, seeds the front row with her groovy friends (Sofia Coppola, Vincent Gallo, the sexily ravaged Psychedelic Furs singer Richard Butler) and gets the best models to sashay down her runway. And whether you take to her retro-boho pastiche sensibility or not, you always walk out smiling.For fall, Sui rummaged through the great moments of glitter rock and summoned the ghost of Biba, the legendary late-sixties London boutique, with its stylized forties vibe and clientele of chic, dissolute waifs. She crimped the models’ hair, put them in brightly printed opaque tights and Cuban heels, then sent them out in colorful cardigans paired with flared skirts, suits enlivened by velvet trim, floaty ruffled printed dresses, and lingerie looks like bed jackets and lace-trimmed satin skirts. Restraint? What’s that? There were lamé boots, lamé gloves, lamé jackets, and lamé trim on her boot-cut jeans. She kept the accessories crew busy, loading each look with gold chains, wrapping leopard belts over jackets and coats, and pinning lots of brooches to lapels. It could easily have been discordant, but under Sui’s guidance the result was a burst of much-needed cheerful noise.
10 February 2004
A veteran flea-market scavenger, Anna Sui is a mixmaster who gives equal weight to thrift-store treasures and fine antiques. The same holds true for her collections, where she tosses decades and movements together with gusto.While many designers have zeroed in on the mid-’60s mod aesthetic this season, Sui focused instead on the end of that decade, specifically the London boutique Biba and its art deco motifs and girlish, narrow-cut fashions. She sent out sweet little dresses in lace or printed chiffon with fluttery handkerchief hems, body-hugging cardigans, slim harlequin-pattern jerseys, and popcorn-knit sweaters in muted plums, browns and greens. But like a juggler itching for a challenge, Sui upped the ante by tossing in another decade—the ’70s, which showed up in patchwork quilted parkas, anoraks and a group of ski pants paired (confusingly) with beaded chiffon tops. It was a lot to handle, but Sui is a confident fashion deejay, and in her hands it all became cheerful, noisy fun.
11 February 2003
Whatever the current trends, count on Anna Sui to find the appropriate soundtrack. This season, it was the Ramones from beginning to end, providing a high-energy backdrop for her punchy spring collection.Sui started out with kicky plaid pleated minis; hip-length, boxy, tight trousers trimmed in bright ribbon; and Carnaby Street-inspired striped shirts. She quickly moved out of the dance club and into the country club with a series of dresses, skirts, tops and jackets inspired by organized sports: piqué golf skirts embroidered with frogs, short white tennis dresses that mixed athletic mesh and lace, football jerseys shrunk for a more feminine fit, cropped baseball jackets, prepped-out sweaters and fuzzy cardigans. From there, she went fragile (thoughBlitzkrieg Bopcontinued to pound out of the speakers), closing the show with a series of lacy, neon-bright baby-doll dresses worn with clunky Frye boots. There were some cute, compelling pieces mixed into the outfits, like a ruffled floral windbreaker and some short silk floral dresses. But Sui's ability to translate street trends into great items was not as much in evidence as it has been in past seasons.
19 September 2002
Well before fashion's current love of groupie chic and punk revival took hold, rock 'n' roll was Anna Sui's chief source of inspiration. Each Sui collection reveals what's been in her CD player, and for Fall she clearly had Cream, T. Rex and Sergeant Pepper–era Beatles in heavy rotation. The result was a groovy, hippie show that wouldn't have been out of place at Woodstock—although it looked just fine on Naomi Campbell, Carolyn Murphy and all the other top models who regularly walk Sui's show.On the bill were chiffon baby-doll tops with vivid Indian prints, appliquéd denim skirts, studded boot-cut cords, open-work crocheted tops and dresses, and wool separates embroidered with folky cross-stitch. Sui worked mostly in dark hues, with occasional forays into historically appropriate colors like purple, olive green and peacock blue. Greatest hits included a series of pretty, sheer floral-print dresses and two great embroidered Mongolian lamb-trimmed coats that screamed "light my fire."Worn head-to-toe, this collection could be too trippy-hippie for the average customer. But a few pieces from Sui's '60s anthology could retune any wardrobe.
12 February 2002
Western pioneers and prairie dwellers were the main source of inspiration this season for Anna Sui, a designer who has built her reputation on her ability to re-imagine the fashions of days gone by.In her Art Nouveau-inspired showroom, equipped with wrought-iron mirrors, velour settees with heart-shaped backs and colored glass lamps, Sui showed antique denim dresses with embroidered hems, sheer Swiss-miss tops, and girly, dotted dresses worn with virginal white tights and ballerina flats. Spicing things up, the designer moved on to less innocent Daisy Duke-style short shorts, tight airbrushed jeans, and skimpy butterfly crepe shirts. Indigo and lace mini-frocks, floral tops and distressed cotton crochet dresses completed the collection.Rounding off Sui's sexy update on Western saloon style were cameo brooches, turn-of-the-(nineteenth)-century necklaces and tan cowgirl boots.
18 September 2001
There were two sides to Anna Sui's collection: a stark, punk-influenced series of slashed black jersey tops, dresses and skirts with crisscross straps, metal studs and butch-belle belts, and an array of embroidered and embellished printed chiffon and crepe ensembles. Sui would've done well to stick with the former—the moment girly prints, fringed bags and raffia anything came along, the powerful image fell apart.Not surprisingly, the three most directional looks were worn by Belgian model Hannelore, who is fast emerging as a poster face for the new haute-punk and the more street-savvy reinterpretations of the '80s. She wore a simple white silk cowl-neck dress that looked perfectly right, a purple mesh dolman dress, and a one-shouldered black jersey number that would've worked equally well at CBGB in 1985 or at a cocktail reception in the downtown Guggenheim right now.
19 September 2000
Bohemian deluxe is the leitmotif of Sui's work, and this season was no exception. Her runway resembled a luxurious recasting of an outdoor concert circa 1974: There were assorted floral dresses worn over colored stockings, riotous contrasts of patterns, patchwork skirts, graphic sweaters and studded jeans. Chunky stone necklaces and earrings were the perfect accessories. For evening, Sui offered embroidered georgette blouses, fringed skirts in black and pink, Lurex-striped dresses and sequined mesh tops.
8 February 2000