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 of Doctor 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.)
