Is Anna Sui one of the official pillars of the industry? #NYFW
“Mad, bad and dangerous to know.” Lady Catherine Lamb was describing her lover, Lord Byron, but also giving a shorthand for creatives for generations to follow – romantics who fall to the side of a little bit glam and a little bit slammed. Replace “bad” with “plaid” (well, houndstooth) and throw in “sparkly,” and Catherine’s words describe Anna Sui’s 2023 Fall show – a little bit punk, a little bit shiny and a lot of girly-girls showing you they’re not too girly to have fun.
Sui created a party-like setting at the intimate East Village club Heaven Can Wait, and attracted some superstar wattage of the best-friends sort: – Marc (Jacobs) with his also husband Char (Defrancesco); Sofia (Coppola) and Karen (Elson), with her equally gorgeous daughter Scarlett White – a veritable lookalike, save for her raven locks.
They watched and reveled as Anna’s girls danced the Watusi in high hemlines and low-heeled boots. A key look: “little dresses to dance in,” inspired in part by photos of Jane Holzer at the Peppermint Lounge in the Sixties. (Holzer, too, was at the show.) Mission accomplished – the dresses were prime for dancing of an almost athletic variety. Yet Baby Jane wasn’t their only reference. Sui revealed in her program notes that she took inspiration as well from her former self. For one childhood Halloween, she pilfered a slipdress from her mother’s closet and proudly declared herself, “Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield Eight!”
The resulting dresses shared the spotlight with faux-chichi tweedy tailoring and a bejeweled Western moment, the looks finished off with quirky accoutrements — signature “Bunny” hats and other chapeaux, daisy-chain jewelry, jazzed-up cowboy boots.
It was all happy and lovely – and worthy of far more attention than Sui gets. For literally decades she has been a cornerstone of New York Fashion Week. But because, when she was starting out, she didn’t fit neatly into either of the two silos that dominated that landscape – designer sportswear; designer ready-to-wear (designer here referring to price point rather than creative spirit or cultural resonance), many industry honchos came to think of her as niche – lovely and smart, but somehow a different-drummer independent, apart from the main. Which, all these years later she is – a genuine creator who has remained true to herself and in control of her business.
Finally, now, at a time when so many younger designers are seeking to forge their own, iconoclastic paths in American fashion, shouldn’t that distinction make Anna Sui one of the official pillars of the industry? May the dresses twist on to the beat, and may Anna’s rock-and-roll anthem thrum on — ever mad, bad and fabulous to know.