“So Much to Never Forget:” Friends and Collaborators Pick Their Favorite Anna Sui Moment
Columbus Circle might not seem like one of New York’s more whimsical locales, but thanks to Anna Sui, the bustling corner of Central Park just got a little more transporting. Inside the Museum of Arts and Design on the circle’s southern edge, Sui’s 30-year career is being celebrated in a new exhibit, The World of Anna Sui. Across several galleries, her loves and obsessions are illustrated alongside her runway garments, concert posters, and films, all layered together by theme, not unlike one of the designer’s famous mood boards.
“She is magic,” says Bill Mullen, a stylist and friend of Sui who has worked with her on her runway shows. That magic, even for those who have been privy to Sui’s unstoppable inspiration for decades, can be hard to explain. Elements of obsession, of creativity, and of a magpie-like consumption of all things artful fuse together through some kind of singular process to make up an Anna Sui collection.
Stylist Paul Cavaco, another of Sui’s collaborators and friends, says, “When you speak to Anna, there is always something new. Always! She’s either gone to an exhibit, seen something on TV, or seen an old movie, and then started researching. Everything that she looks at could possibly be inspiration. If you’re friends with her, you get brought along for the fun and you learn a million things from her. She’s inspiring and she is inspired. She is interested in life—and in you.”
Here, five of her nearest and dearest return the favor, highlighting the collections from Sui’s career that have left the biggest impact on them.
Photo: Condé Nast Archive1/5Sofia Coppola, director
“I love how Anna always knows so much about different parts of culture. She just has such a knowledge and brings so much of that to her work, and so you can see all of these references from so many visual arts that Anna is interested in. She always knows every movie and music and style. She puts it all into her work, which is really fun to see how they all jumble together, but it always feels like Anna. I remember seeing the Spring 1994 show, and it was so exciting. It was one with all the supermodels and the babydoll dresses. I ordered one of those dresses, and I remember stuffed-animal backpacks. It was so cute and girly and fun. I always remember the show and the texture of those dresses and the kind of crinoline parts of them. I loved that show.”
Photo: Getty Images2/5Bill Mullen, stylist
“Anna Sui Spring 1995: There was so much to never forget. I can still see the ‘dominatrixes’ with black lace over their eyes, and I hear the Little Rascals soundtrack. Linda [Evangelista] in Miss Crabtree lingerie, brandishing a cat o’nine tails. The audience gagulating. When Nadja [Auermann] emerged at her most-platinum, supermodel-goddess best in Jean Harlow silver lamé and smoking a cigarette in a holder, the crowd just lost it. Screaming—like, ‘Oh, my God, Stevie Nicks is doing ‘Gold Dust Woman’–level screaming. Naomi’s glitzy-glam hula look…I could go on and on. You had to be there. Dream girls who didn’t need last names, feeling the Anna Sui fantasy and giving us life. Being in Anna Sui’s world has always been and continues to be like this, whether behind the scenes or in the front row. She is magic.”
Photo: GoRunway.com3/5Frédéric Sanchez, DJ
“There is so much to say about Anna’s creations, and I am so glad an exhibition is being done about her. I am probably not the best person to choose one collection because, for me, each of them is a piece of the puzzle that builds her work, and each of them is a fragment of what makes her story and our friendship. But I have to say that in the Spring 2019 collection, she has reached what is the quintessence of her art. She has never [tried] to fit to what was going on and has always done what she wanted to do, but these last 10 years, I have seen her going further in the way she makes associations of ideas and manipulation of images to make her fantasy become real. She is an American designer, but she is also a nomad and a citizen of the world, and for this, you can understand why music is so important for her: Old Chinese jazz, French new wave, the ’50s glamour, ’60s West Coast and Brit psychedelia—and without forgetting the ’80s Mudd Club club, the punk, and the grunge. I see this Spring 2019 collection like a synthesis of her own language and also of a designer that, after all these years, is never bored and still has fun.”
Photo: Getty Images4/5Paul Cavaco, stylist
“Anna describes her collections, and it’s usually a mash up of ideas. When she was starting out, we would all go to her showroom to look before the shows. When I asked her what the theme was, she goes, ‘It’s hip-hop Tibetan surfer.’ We were like, ‘What is that?!’ Pieces are coming in and she’s putting it together as we’re all sitting there. The first look, I think, is on Naomi Campbell. Naomi opened the show and she had a surfer short, a T-shirt with a Tibetan print, and then she had a bandana on her head almost like Tupac. It looked like a hip-hop Tibetan surfer! Anna will say these things, and you’ll think none of these things have anything to do with each other, and I don’t see how it’s going to go together to even be good looking, and she surprises you every time. This was my favorite collection; I loved it. I loved everything about it. It was great. Her eye is impeccable, the mix and the excitement is just beyond.”
Photo: Indigital.tv5/5Jeannie Sui Wonders, photographer and Anna’s niece
“Her Spring 2009 is one of my favorites. I grew up going to her shows, but that collection came out when I was in high school and I could really first start wearing her clothes then. It helped me define a public sense of self. I love the color palette and folk prints, and I remember her telling me about one of the main inspirations for the collection: the mid-century designer Alexander Girard. He’s still one of my favorites to this day. There’s so much richness in the aesthetic world of her clothes that it’s easy to find something to resonate with.”