Fashion Fame

Anna Sui’s runway-cum-rock shows never fail to wake up even the most harried editor. She is famous for culling from bottomless treasure chest of retro references. Sui has called on a crazy quilt of inspirations for years such as the New York Dolls, Pre-Raphaelite paintings, the American West, Uzbekistan, etc. Above all the noise, Sui manages to hit the key trends every season.

She was born in Detroit to French-educated Chinese emigrants in 1964. A flea-market junkie, she idolized youthful dreams of stitching clothes for rock royalty like Anita Pallenberg, and landed in New York with a scholarship to Parsons. After only two years, she ditched class and dove headfirst into the industry, learning the ropes designing for sportswear labels and styling for photographer Steven Meisel, on shoots.

In 1980, she brought her collection of six pieces to the Boutique Show, which is aNew York’s trade fair, and caught the eye of a Macy’s buyer; a Christmas window and an ad in The New York Times followed. The next decade, Sui produced and ran her business out of her apartment, and step up to real runway in 1991. A year later she opened her boutique in Soho, crammed to the rafters with Victorian punk. Today Sui is running more than 30 boutiques worldwide.