{"id":101452,"date":"2025-04-16T08:06:52","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T08:06:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=101452"},"modified":"2025-04-16T08:06:52","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T08:06:52","slug":"anna-sui-grazia-usa-spring-2025","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/anna-sui-grazia-usa-spring-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The World of Anna Sui’ Arrives in Phoenix"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Anna Sui Spring\/Summer 1994. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Anna Sui<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI<\/span>\u2019ve tried to be minimal, but it never works out because I just love embellishment, detail, and vintage clothes,\u201d says New York\u2019s queen of bohemian fashion Anna Sui when I meet the designer in her fantasia of a Garment District showroom with red floors, purple walls, and black-lacquered Victorian furniture a few days before the start of New York Fashion Week in early February. This attempt at restraint is a surprising admission for the larger-than-life subject of the touring exhibition The World of Anna Sui <\/i><\/a>that arrives at the Phoenix Art Museum\u2014 PhxArt for short\u2014this month for its first West Coast engagement. Sui\u2019s vintage-inspired bricoleur sensibility is undeniably having a resurgence, with Gen Z style icons Olivia Rodrigo and Bella Hadid photographed wearing both current season Anna Sui designs and Ssense reissues of vintage styles, while TikTok is flooded with clips from her \u201990s runway shows that featured OG It Girls Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington.<\/p>\n

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HIPPIE\/ROCKSTAR Anna Sui Fall\/Winter 2016, Hazel Canning 1972-1973. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Anna Sui, courtesy of PhxArt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhen I make fabric selections I\u2019ll think, Oh, we can just make this a plain jacket, <\/i>but then it ends up with paillettes all over it,\u201d Sui says, as she leads me deeper down the rabbit hole, down a hall illuminated by Tiffany pendant lights and through her bustling 22-person studio stuffed with fabric rolls to her office decorated with Art Nouveau-stenciled mood boards, a Beauty and the Beast<\/i>-worthy collection of art books, a black-lacquered dining table-cum-desk she found at a flea market, and a collection of papier-mach\u00e9 mannequin heads from her first store. \u201cBefore kindergarten I came to New York to be a flower girl at my uncle\u2019s wedding, and I went back to Michigan telling my parents that I was going to move here and be a fashion designer,\u201d she recalls. At 60, the suburban Detroit native still has the aura of a Midwest princess living out her downtown fashion fantasies.<\/p>\n

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PUNK Anna Sui Spring\/Summer 2007, Crust punk jacket embellished by Tim A. Shanahan 2002. Photo Credit: Karl Prouse\/Catwalking\/Getty Images, courtesy of PhxArt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On this cold winter day, Sui is dressed in a multicolor glitter tweed boucl\u00e9 jacket and matching blouse in shades more shocking than Schiap pink from her Fall\/Winter 2019 Poptimisms collection accessorized with a jumbo resin butterfly pendant necklace. \u201cI think it\u2019s important to make a bigger effort as far as what I\u2019m going to wear to work every day,\u201d she says. This proclamation is classic Anna Sui. She\u2019s been marching to the beat of her own drum since she first began dressing her supermodel friends as a recent Parsons grad in the 1980s; Karl Lagerfeld reportedly inquired \u201cWho is this Anna?\u201d when the Trinity all turned up to Chanel fittings in Paris one season in her vibrant printed babydoll dresses. Largely eschewing trends, Sui is sometimes in sync with the wider fashion world and other times not, but she has found success on her own terms\u2014and always with a smile.<\/p>\n

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SURFER Anna Sui Spring\/Summer 2016, Cole of California 1950s. Photo Credit: Frazer Harrison\/Getty Images for NYFW: The Shows, courtesy of PhxArt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAnna\u2019s strength is that she has just stuck to her vision,\u201d says Dennis Nothdruft, head of exhibitions at London\u2019s Fashion and Textile Museum, where he originated the World of Anna Sui <\/i>exhibition in 2017 that has since traveled to Tokyo, Shanghai, New York, Fort Lauderdale, and Charlotte, North Carolina. \u201cWe wanted to call the show The World of Anna Sui <\/i>because she has her space that she\u2019s created.\u201d Sui\u2019s maximal, fantastical approach to design extends to the environments her clothes live in. To create a sense of full immersion, the PhxArt presentation will transform the museum\u2019s galleries with decorative flower and butterfly decals, vinyl reproductions of Aubrey Beardsley prints, fabric pattern murals, and black-lacquered furniture and display cases. \u201cI\u2019ve had the same decor sense since I was a teenager,\u201d Sui says. \u201cThe first piece of furniture that I bought for my bedroom was a Victorian vanity from the Salvation Army that looked like it had been in a fire. When I brought it home, my mother was horrified and I said, \u2018No, no, no, I\u2019m going to make it look good.\u2019 So I painted it all black.\u201d<\/p>\n

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AMERICANA Anna Sui Spring\/Summer 2017, Hillbilly Westerns 1940s-1950s. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Anna Sui, courtesy of PhxArt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The World of Anna Sui <\/i>presents 83 head-to-toe fashion magpie ensembles, complete with James Coviello hats, Erickson Beamon costume jewelry, Mondottica sunglasses, and Ballin and Hush Puppies shoes. Featuring such standouts as a Fall\/Winter 2024 crop top and babushka scarf Miss Marple ensemble, Spring\/Summer 1994 his-and-hers babydoll dresses, and a pair of Fall\/Winter 1992 backless chaps worn by Campbell, they\u2019re organized around 12 archetypes: Americana, androgyny, fairy tale, grunge, hippie\/rockstar, Mod, nomad, punk, retro, schoolgirl, surfer, and Victorian. Collectively the looks embody the many colorful characters from cowgirls and hippie chicks to Pre-Raphaelite muses and rockstars that populate Sui\u2019s universe. \u201cI never looked back until we dug out the archive for this exhibit,\u201d Sui says. \u201cI just kept moving forward and didn\u2019t realize that I kept repeating these signature themes throughout my career.<\/p>\n

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SCHOOLGIRL Anna Sui Spring\/Summer 2017, Rudi Gernreich Fall\/Winter 1967. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Anna Sui, courtesy of PhxArt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

New to this iteration are five looks from the past four years and six historical garments that mirror themes in the designer\u2019s work drawn from the PhxArt\u2019s robust fashion design collection comprising more than 10,000 objects. \u201cIt was a great experience for us to open up our archive to a designer and look at curation as a collaborative model that allows for greater dialogue,\u201d says PhxArt\u2019s Director and CEO Jeremy Mikolajczak. Helen Jean, the museum\u2019s curator of fashion, did a rough edit and asked Sui to choose her favorites. Sui was immediately drawn to a 1960s Hillbilly Westerns of Denver fringed shirt and a Fall\/Winter 1967 Rudi Gernreich Peter Pan dress, one of her favorite designers. \u201cHelen had pulled quite a few Victorian pieces, but when I saw the purple-and-black bodice, I knew that had to be it,\u201d Sui says of an early 20th-century top collaged together from brocade, chiffon, lace, and velvet.<\/p>\n

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VICTORIAN Anna Sui Fall\/Winter 2009, C. Joyeuse early 20th-century. Photo Credit: Karl Prouse\/Catwalking\/Getty Images, courtesy of PhxArt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These days, Sui continues moving forward, with an eye to the past, thanks to her twentysomething niece-muses, actress Chase Sui Wonders, director Jeannie Sui Wonders, and Isabelle Sui, who now works with her as brand director. \u201cA few years ago my nieces started showing up to our family Christmas dinner in their moms\u2019 clothes from the \u201990s,\u201d Sui recalls. \u201cThe first things that they dug out were from the first collection, the windowpane pieces, and then the Christmas after they found some of the grunge collection,\u201d she says, referring to the Carnaby Street-esque miniskirt suits worn by the Supers in her Fall\/Winter 1991 runway debut and the rainbow stripes and romantic dustbowl florals from the Kurt Cobain-inspired Spring\/Summer 1993 collection shown the same season as her dear friend Marc Jacobs\u2019 infamous grunge collection for Perry Ellis. She loves the way the younger Suis break up full looks and remix her vintage styles with sporty layering pieces. \u201cIt is just fun to see how they interpret it nowadays,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Read GRAZIA USA\u2019<\/em>s Spring Issue<\/a> featuring cover star Paris Hilton<\/a>:<\/strong><\/h4>\n