Anna Sui, who Vogue once called “the darling of downtown design” is getting all dolled up, thanks to Mattel. Her 11.5” Barbie doll likeness, part of the brand’s Inspiring Women series, will be released on May 1 to mark Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, with a percentage of profits to be donated to Apex for Youth via the Barbie Dream Gap Project.
Barbie Sui is dressed in a star-print frock and platform boots from the designer’s spring 2007 collection and sunglasses from spring 2025. Sui’s personal style and beauty signatures—banged hairstyle, winged eyes, red lips, green nail polish, jet earrings, and black bakelite rings—have been rendered in incredible detail. (Her Barbie doppelganger even comes with a toy bottle of Anna Sui Classic Eau de Toilette.) Vibes-wise, the stylish doll projects strength, quiet confidence, and optimism.
Sui moved from Detroit to New York to study at Parsons School of Design. She worked as a stylist with Steven Meisel and for junior fashion companies before launching her namesake label from her apartment in 1980. She presented her first show in 1991. Her spring 1992 collection, Vogue reported, paid “homage to Barbie and to the teen fashion magazines she read as a kid. ‘My clothes are about nostalgia and memories of my own childhood,’” she commented at the time. says. Even when she was creating collections that reflected current trends—be they grunge or androgyny—she always added a historical and dress-up aspect to her work.
Her meticulous research and historical erudition are legendary, and her belief in the magic of fashion is unwavering. Through fashion, Sui imagines not only a prettier world, but a better one.
Below, Sui talks about how Barbie helped shape her world.
Vogue: Tell us about your relationship with Barbie.
Anna Sui: I am a total Barbie nerd. When I was a kid, I started a Barbie club with my neighbor. She went to Catholic school, so the only time we got to see each other was on the weekends when we’d play Barbie and build these Barbie villages and we use our little cases as part of the walls. [When we got the Barbie Dream House] for Christmas or birthdays we would build these little villages and have the car parked outside and then add the furniture. It was always an ongoing project. And then we found another neighbor on the next block that joined us, so it was an obsession for years.
Regarding your very own Barbie, did Mattel approach you?
They did, and it was quite an honor being singled out. She has my bangs, my hair, my eyeliner, my red lipstick. She has my green nails. She has my rings—one on each hand. The dress and the boots are from the spring 2007 collection and she’s wearing my jet earrings. They totally got the details of the boots and the jewelry. I mean, you couldn’t ask for more.
You said: “I know my younger self would be incredibly proud of how far I’ve come, and I hope my doll inspires fans to embrace curiosity, nurture their creativity, and dream without limits.” What role have dreams played in your career?
The thing about Barbie is that it was very aspirational. The fact that she had careers meant that you could dream about being an airline stewardess, or a homemaker, or a nurse, or having a sports car, or all of those things. The fact that you had all these possibilities was just so important at [a young] age. It wasn’t so much that [you] had to look like the doll; it was very, very aspirational. She was a fashion model, or she was a singer, or she had a gold lamé ballgown. All those things were just so dream-creating at that point.
Barbie’s kind of contrary; she’s sometimes been singled out as an impossible standard of beauty, but at the same time, she was embodying different things that a woman could be, so she was more than just a perfect blonde.
I think Barbie just gave you something to aspire to and opened up that possibility. There was a big retrospective of Barbies at the Fashion Textile Museum, and you saw throughout the years, she was always very inspiring as her style changed.
Were some of your first fashion designs for Barbie?
Definitely. My mom did home sewing. She made clothes for me, she made clothes for herself, and I would always take the scraps and make clothes out of them. As my cousins started getting Barbies, I would make clothes for them or knit clothes for them. So again, it was all feeding into that idea of, ‘I’m going to be a clothing designer, so I should be doing this.’ And even my neighbor that I played Barbie with, she had a lot more of the Barbie wardrobe than I did so I would supplement mine by making additional outfits for my Barbie.
Barbie was a fashion designer too, and she had a portfolio and a business suit to wear. I think she even had a hat and a black and a red suit. It was the ’60s. I remember in my mind that that’s what I needed to be. By the time I was applying for jobs, a business suit wasn’t required, but I did always carry a portfolio, and one that was similar to Barbie’s, because in my mind, that’s what a designer had.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
