The Who What Wear Podcast: The Legendary Anna Sui: From ’90s Fashion Darling to Gen Z Cult Favorite

0:01Kat Collings:Hey, Who What Wear listeners. I feel like people have been talking about selling on eBay a lot lately, and the more I hear about it, the more it makes sense. Because we all have those things. The jacket from a very specific phase, the lamp that only worked in your last apartment, the pan you bought for the version of you that was definitely going to cook more. and from what I hear, selling on eBay is actually really simple. It's basically just a few photos and suddenly the stuff that's just been sitting there has a chance to find millions of buyers who are genuinely excited to have it. That's what I like about it.

0:37Kat Collings:On eBay, the things that no longer fit your life can still be exactly right for someone else and you get a little more space, a little extra money, and maybe a better sense of what fits your life now. Find what you love, sell what you don't on eBay, the place for things people love.

1:09Kat Collings:Welcome to the Who What Wear podcast. I'm Who What Wears editor-in-chief, Kat Collings, and today on the podcast, I'm sitting down in the studio with designer Anna Sui. Anna has made over 90 collections and still retains sole ownership of her iconic brand. Today, her designs have been embraced by Gen Z in full force, including celebrities like Olivia Rodrigo and Addison Rae. Today, Anna joins us to talk about the inspiration behind her latest collection, her new Gen Z audience, and maintaining her point of view over the years. It's all coming up on Who But Wear.

1:51Kat Collings:Anna, welcome to the Who But Wear podcast. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. You couldn't be more excited than me because you are a living legend. You need no introduction, but I'd still like to take things back to the beginning for our listeners and watchers and hear about the early days of your origin story. So how were you first introduced to fashion?

2:09Anna Sui:This is the crazy thing. I was a flower girl at my aunt and uncle's wedding, and it was in New York City. I was probably four or five. Okay, yeah. And when I got back to Michigan, where I'm from, I said to my parents, when I grow up, I'm going to be a fashion designer and move to New York. I spent my whole childhood and early teen years trying to figure out what that even meant and how to do it.

2:29Kat Collings:And you attended Parsons School of Design, but you didn't graduate. You dropped out. Do you think leaving school early helped you learn faster?

2:38Anna Sui:Yeah, actually, I got hired at the end of my second year. I heard seniors talking about a job opportunity. And I thought, oh, I love that brand. And I ran up there with my student portfolio and I got the job. And I think it was really invaluable because the designer, Erica Elias, was known in the business as the toughest boss in town. And she was very, very demanding. But I learned so much about sourcing fabrics. She gave me my own design room. I had a draper. I had two sewers. And so I learned it all, how to be a designer, like all on the spot. First hand. Yeah. And how old were you? I was 19 still, I think.

3:18Anna Sui:Wow.

3:18Kat Collings:And she just saw the talent and was like, come work with me. She just loved my portfolio. Yeah. And you had the audacity to be like, I deserve to be here. So how soon after you left school did you launch your brand?

3:31Anna Sui:I worked for like two or three companies, like very big sports warehouses. and then I had these friends, this is during the punk rock era, and they were making this great jewelry out of vintage findings. And I thought, oh, that's what I want to do. I want to sell the kind of stores they're selling. And at that point, there were really cool rock and roll stores throughout the U.S. in every major city, and they would do these trade shows and sell their jewelry. So they said, well, why don't you put together a little collection and let's share a booth, which is what we did. But I didn't end up selling all the little rock and roll stores, Macy's and Bloomingdale's came to me and placed orders.

4:08Anna Sui:And I ended up with a New York Times ad for Christmas and I got fired from my job because of that.

4:14Kat Collings:So that's how I started my business. They're like, she's kind of interested in doing her own thing. She's not wanting to design the athletic wear anymore. So you had your sights on one thing and then Bloomingdale's and Macy's just kind of took you in this really kind of a wide exposure moment.

4:30Anna Sui:At that point, they had what were known as swing shops and they would do like the most happening trends that were going on. And so they had me designing clothes for their trend shops.

4:40Kat Collings:How did like the Anna Sweet Purple, I think of purple, I think of butterflies, like that world and these emblems that are so individual and distinctive of you. How did that come about?

4:50Anna Sui:As a little girl, I saw a movie and there was a princess with a purple Rolls Royce. And I said to my mom, I love that color purple. can I have my birthday cake in that color and my birthday dress in that color? And I just made a distinction that that was my favorite color. So when we decided to do a shop, I had put together these files that we called my genius files, and they were just pictures from magazines and newspapers that I saved throughout my whole life. There were shops in there that were boutiques like Biba and also like favorite things. And so I just used a compilation of those and developed all these icons for my brand, like the butterfly, like the carved roses, like the black lacquer.

5:31Anna Sui:I had to come up with some concepts for the store. So the black lacquer came from buying pieces of furniture and wanting them all to match. So I painted them black. The red floor came from my apartment and then the lavender was from my favorite color. So we did the walls. Everything became icons of the brand as well. So the type of furniture that I was sourcing was this Rococo sort of furniture with curves and roses. And then I collected a lot of butterfly images and butterfly mirrors, and we painted them black and put them on the walls. So all those things went into the product as well and became the signature of the brand.

6:07Anna Sui:And then that became kind of what set my brand apart from like what other things look like. And also gave like the cosmetics company and the fragrance company, when I got those licenses, something to go by and something to build the brand about. And so that's stuck with me all these years. How do you research for collections and things like that? Remember that I started before the digital age. So I spent time at the library. As I said, I saved all these clippings from magazines. I would go and buy old magazines or look for books at the library and make copies of everything like on the Xerox machines.

6:46Anna Sui:And I would put together these boards and folders for inspiration. And I still kind of do the same thing. I have like a board in my office that I build my whole collection on. And it starts out with the theme of the collection. And also I build my color story that way, finding images that are in the colors that I'm thinking of and putting it all together, which clues in my staff and then also all my licensed people, what the collection is all about and gives them perspectives to kind of research as well. It's just kind of a language that we have that brings them along on the journey that I'm trying to build.

7:22Anna Sui:But I want to talk about the 90s some more because I feel like you

7:25Kat Collings:arguably had one of the most splashiest supermodel clad fashion show debuts in 1991. And for anyone who's not familiar, can you describe what a conventional fashion show looked like at that time and how yours was different and why it made such a big impact?

7:41Anna Sui:Fashion in the 80s was all about power dressing. It was very shoulder pads and Ms. clothes like for work. I had this whole idea to do things that sold in boutiques and that had the kind of a rock and roll feeling to them. And this whole phenomena happened in the early 90s where all the arts were changing and music switched to alternative rock and films switched to independent films. and the fashion world, suddenly there were new designers. And we were the new guard taking over from the Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, established designers of 7th Avenue. The brands were all very small houses and kind of like started using some of the supermodels that were from that earlier era and giving them a new look.

8:31Anna Sui:And what happened was it kind of rang a bell for those models that finally here's clothes for them. They weren't mommy's clothes because they were all like in their late teens, early 20s. They felt more comfortable in these clothes. And I remember that summer before I did my first show going to the flea market with Naomi. And she was talking about, oh, I want to get like a baby doll top, you know, like from a nightgown. And maybe we could chop it off and I can wear it with my jeans. And then there was a model making chokers. These were models that were wearing head to toe designer clothes like Chanel, Versace.

9:07Anna Sui:and suddenly they wanted this other look.

9:09Kat Collings:Yeah.

9:10Anna Sui:And I knew that maybe this was my time.

9:12Kat Collings:What do you remember about working with models like Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista?

9:16Anna Sui:I mean, they were so seasoned and professional and knew exactly what was going on. They would come in when you had your fittings and they would count how many outfits they had in the show. They're like doing other people's jobs. And how come I'm not opening the show because I see who's opening this? I mean, they just knew exactly. Where through the rest of the years, most models weren't that conscious of that setup and didn't challenge you on it. But those supermodels knew exactly. They have ambitions.

9:43Kat Collings:I love that. And when you talk about the brands that were kind of part of this new wave alongside your Anna Sui brand, what were some of those names? Well, Marc Jacobs and Todd Oldham and Isaac was around then.

9:57Anna Sui:And there was a new concept going like Barney's Co-op. Yes, of course. And so that's how I really got my start. And what really helped me build my business is that they were really supporting me. And they were the ones that bought my baby doll dress and they bought it in so many different versions and kept asking for a new fabrication every season. And it was geared at a different customer than, let's say, designer. the problem, like stores didn't know where to put my merchandise. So I didn't really sit next to Calvin Klein. And so they were always kind of putting me next to the escalator on a single rack and it never really fit in until they developed this whole contemporary fashion.

10:36Kat Collings:It's incredible that like your work was so disruptive that there wasn't a place for you initially. And then the space had to be created. I'm still waiting for Barney's comeback. I feel like everybody is ready for this.

10:46Anna Sui:And I live next door, so it made it really convenient. Like I used to go there all the time after work.

10:51Kat Collings:Just check on your clothes. It sounds like such a legendary moment in New York in the 90s. Are there any behind the scenes sort of moments that people don't know about? Any little anecdotes or stories?

11:02Anna Sui:This is before the internet and everything was word of mouth. Everything was like who you knew and who you would run into, who was dating who. And like that was my audience. Like models were dating a lot of the young Hollywood actors and And they would ask, can they come to the show? I would go out to a concert and invite the guys from the band to the show or to model. It was just kind of all word of mouth. And we all gravitated towards the same restaurant. So at night, when you went out to a restaurant, it wouldn't be like a room full of strangers. It would be almost you knew everybody in the room or wanted to know them.

11:39Anna Sui:It was all connections like that. Very organic, it sounds like. And genuine. It was more like friendships. Now everything is so digital and so fast.

11:47Kat Collings:Yeah, and so corporate and so influencer-driven. You know, it's been 35 years since your runway debut, and your work still feels just as relevant. Thank you. And I want to talk about your most recent collection. Let's talk about the inspiration behind that.

12:01Anna Sui:I had seen Lady Chatterley's Lover with Emma Korn, and I just loved the costuming in that, and also her character, how she started out as this very, like, traditional Victorian wife. and from falling in love with this man that worked on their premises, she became undone and her clothes started becoming undone. So I wanted all the models to look like they just had a roll in the hay. So the hair was messy. The clothes were kind of like disheveled and wrinkly. And so it just made it very sensuous. And so that was the fun part of like trying to put the whole collection together is capturing that look and that feeling.

12:39Kat Collings:Is there a look in that spring-summer 26 collection that you can walk us through, like, the specific inspiration and how it kind of came to life as a look in your show?

12:48Anna Sui:Because Lady Chatterley was always running off in the middle of the night, it was like a lot of nightgowns and little wraps or a robe. And so there's a lot of that feeling of like a nightgown or a slip. And then she's got some sort of cover up with it. And we even made the shoes look like bedroom slippers. John Fluvog did these beautiful brocade shoes. Yes. And then we put these lace pom-poms on them. Everything was meant to look like that. Like she was like running from the bedroom to the farmhouse. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

13:18Kat Collings:That makes a lot of sense. I feel like it was also the New Romantics era in the 1980s, right? That was another reference. So can you explain what drew you to that era?

13:27Anna Sui:So for the fall collection, I had been in London and there was this great exhibition about Blitz, which was a fantastic club that happened right after punk, all the new romantic music. It was the beginning of MTV and music videos. What I loved about the exhibition is everything was pre-digital. So the pieces on view were flyers, fanzines, ticket stubs, and photographs of people at the club. And the only thing digital that was in the exhibition is they recreated the club by projecting on walls and the four walls. And when you walked into that room, you felt like you were walking into the Blitz Club.