Profile | Anna Sui, fashion designer, on being inspired by Madonna, 1980s New York and hanging out with Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista
- Anna Sui spent her Detroit childhood thinking about how to get to New York and be a fashion designer. She achieved that and made some famous friends
- When she met Madonna wearing one of her dresses it gave her the confidence to do her own show, then open her SoHo store so people could ‘understand’ her clothes
My parents are Chinese, but they met while they were going to university in Paris in 1948. My father was studying structural engineering at École nationale des Ponts et Chaussées and then went to the University of Michigan, in the United States. My mother studied painting at Beaux-Arts de Paris. I grew up outside Detroit; my mother and brothers, one older, one younger, still live there.
My mother’s family were from Anhui [in eastern China] but during the Chinese civil war and World War II, everyone was always on the move. My father’s family were from a village not far from Shenzhen [in southern China] and he also lived in Hong Kong as a young boy, but they lived in many provinces.
I would ask my mum and she would explain to me the superstitions because I didn’t understand any of that. We celebrated Christmas and Easter just like everyone else. My parents were very Westernised.
A bite of the Big Apple
I was a flower girl at my uncle’s wedding in New York and, when we went back to Detroit, I told my parents that when I grew up I wanted to move to New York and become a fashion designer. I was four or five, and in kindergarten.
Most things you love about fashion Anna Sui did first
My whole childhood was spent thinking about how to get to New York and become a fashion designer. I would ask my mother to buy Vogue at the grocery store and I would save all these articles. My babysitter would bring Seventeen magazine.
My mum’s first reaction was, why do you want to be a dressmaker? If you have brains why don’t you go to college to become a doctor or lawyer? But then they saw how determined I was, and my father even took freelance work to help pay my tuition. They were very supportive.
Going underground
When I went to Parsons in the mid-’70s, my priority was living in New York and enjoying New York and that’s when I met (photographer) Steven Meisel, who was in another department at Parsons. We started going out every night. I guess that was part of my education: learning about New York underground life.
I want that job
After my second year at Parsons, I had overheard a senior talk about a job that was available and I thought, “I want that job”, so I got it and never went back for my senior year. I dropped out and worked for the company for more than a year as a designer.
I had all these friends making jewellery and selling it to cool boutiques and I wanted to do something like that, so they said, “Why don’t you make a line of clothing?” I made a small collection of five pieces and ended up selling it to a lot of boutiques. At that time, Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s were very fashion-forward and both picked up my first collection. This was 1979-80.
Madonna’s surprise
That was shocking to me because in her room there were racks and racks of clothes and shopping bags from every designer in Paris, so I thought, “I can’t wait to see what she’ll be wearing”, and it turned out she was wearing my dress. That gave me a lot of confidence and, when I got back to New York, Steven said, “Now it’s your turn, you have to do your own show.”
The man from Isetan
The first time I had been to Japan, I was invited by a manufacturer who wanted to produce my collection and have me work from there and when I arrived, they said, you’re going to be surprised because everyone is selling counterfeit Anna Sui T-shirts. Even news-stands on every street corner were selling fake Anna Sui T-shirts. I was crying, thinking this was going to ruin me, but it had actually made me famous.
Home sweet home
One day in 1992, a friend who was working at Calvin Klein and lived down the block in Greenwich Village said “I have an idea for you. People don’t understand your clothes. You don’t fit next to Calvin Klein or Bill Blass, you need to show people what you’re about so you need to open a boutique.”
The next day, I went to SoHo and found the space where I would have my boutique for the next 25 years, which established what the Anna Sui brand was all about, with the red and purple floors, black-lacquer furniture and packaging for the cosmetics line. It was the best idea that anybody ever had that I should do the store. I had no money and we painted the furniture and walls ourselves.
Rock-star quality
I was always interested in the boutiques in London that were dressing all the rock stars. I would comb through newspapers and magazines to see what the Beatles and Rolling Stones were wearing and I started reading names like Ossie Clark and Biba. I always had this one focus: I wanted to design for rock stars and their girlfriends, it’s the type of clothes I’m attracted to and what I always keep in mind for every collection. No matter what the inspiration is, it always goes back to that.
Exploring China
I was last in Beijing opening an Anna Sui Active store at SKP mall in January 2020, and we could hear people talking about Wuhan. I was so used to travelling to Asia two or three times a year and it was always so exciting because China has changed so much over the years.
I was also trying to explore other parts of China because I had always gone to Shanghai and Beijing. Once I went to Guizhou with my mum and we saw the Miao people and the way they lived. The last trip we took together was to Dunhuang to see the painted caves and the desert. It was spectacular. I am looking forward to doing more trips like that and discovering more about Chinese culture.
