Anna Sui

   Perfume Anna Sui (born 1964 in Detroit, Michigan USA) is a fashion designer. She has 32 boutiques in five countries and her collection is sold in 300 stores in over 30 countries. According to her own anecdote, she started with her dolls and her neighbor’s toy soldiers to play like they were at the Oscars, before making and designing some clothes imitating magazine photos.

PerfumeAfter graduating from high school Anna Sui moved to New York City to attend Parsons School of Design, where she started to work with close friend Steven Meisel who is today a fashion photographer. Her early days as a stylist from Meisel’s shoots include editorial for the Italian Fashion Magazine LEI. After leaving Parsons she worked for variety of junior sportswear companies. Sui's business continued to expand in the 1980s. In 1991, she launched her first runway show.

 PerfumeIt was in 1992 that she took a chance with a personal clothing line and opened her first boutique shop at 113 Greene Street in New York City's Soho District. This shop, with it's purple walls and red floors, reflects her taste for pairing flea market furniture and dolly head mannequins. According to relative Grant Sui, "The stores have come to emphasize the epitome of culture in a continually shifting fashion world." The first of Sui's three freestanding boutiques in Asia opened in May 1997 in Tokyo. The second opened in Osaka in the fall of that same year. Another Osaka venue opened in 2000. Isetan Company Limited has attained the main license for the Japanese distribution of the women's collection and Mammina, a subsidiary of Isetan, is the distributor to department and specialty stores there. In 1997, Anna Sui Shoes premiered on her runway for fall 1997. Manufactured by Ballin in Venice, Italy, the shoe collection is comprised of both day and evening styles, and include velvet, silk, patent leather, snake and lizard skin, shearling and suede.

Perfume Anna Sui opened her Los Angeles boutique in 1999 in Sunset Plaza, in West Hollywood. In 1999, Sui launched her signature fragrance and cosmetic line after signing with Wella AG, of Germany to develop it. In a three-sided arrangement, Wella shares the Anna Sui beauty business with Japanese cosmetics maker Albion, who holds the Anna Sui color cosmetics and skin care license. Under the agreements, Wella will produce and market Anna Sui fragrances while Albion introduces the Anna Sui color collection to Japan. Wella will sell the fragrances to Albion, which will distribute them inside Japan, while Albion will sell the color cosmetics to Wella for distribution outside Japan.

Perfume For fall 2000, Sui Dreams, the second Anna Sui fragrance, launched worldwide. Since it's beginning, the fragrance line has expanded to include, Sui Love, Sui Dreams, Dolly Girl, and most recently, in association with Victoria's Secret, the fragrance Secret Wish. She was called a designer who "never panders" by The New York Times, and named to Time Magazine's list of this decade's top five fashion icons. Anna Sui continues to design and manufacture her signature collection in her New York City headquarters. Sui's designs attract many famous clients such as Patricia Arquette, Christina Ricci, Cher, Naomi Campbell, Sofia Coppola, Courtney Love of Hole and James Iha of the Smashing Pumpkins.

ANNA SUI SIGNATURE COSMETICS AND FRAGRANCE COLLECTIONS

* Three sided licensing agreement with Wella AG to manufacture fragrance and Albion to manufacture cosmetics.

* Color collection includes foundation to lip, eye and nail products. Anna Sui fragrance collection includes perfume, eau de toilette and bath products.

* Sui Dreams, the second fragrance from Anna Sui launched Fall 2000.

* Sui Love, the third fragrance from Anna Sui launched Spring 2002.

  ANNA SUI REVIEWS

 New York Times on Anna Sui's Fall 2000 collection

"Ms. Sui seemed to transform herself from a club habitue who always knew what was happening below 14th Street to a mature designer whose inspirations might be a Ken Russell film or a rococo palaceÉ The upshot was a sophisticated look that relied not on obvious symbols of glamour, like pearls and trailing boas, but on simple modern ideals as lightness and comfort."

WWD on Anna Sui's Spring '99 collection

"Anna Sui is a practiced hand at mixing antiquated romance and modern loveÉ Her meld of 'rococo and gypsy' was so fresh it evoked a 'girl who's just fallen in the river and gotten back out,' just as Sui intended."

WWD on Anna Sui's Spring '98 collection

"Three cheers for Anna Sui, who hung 10 with her fabulous spring collection...In one of her best collections in seasons, Anna Sui broke the boredom of fashion week with a terrific show."

The International Herald Tribune on the Spring '98 collection

"Sui's style is rooted in the 1970's, with references to flower power hats, tiny Liberty floral prints, and to the ethnic trail. But she made it all seem fresh and modern... The collection had a sunny spirit that made the downbeat, downtown collections on other runways seem like last year's trends."

WWD on Anna Sui's Fall '97 collection

"...(Sui's) clothes have never been about wallflowers. Instead, she loves a kind of overt, hip fashion that manages to be both saucy and sweet, and she has a knack for combining the familiar and the frivolous in a way that makes perfect sense."

The New York Times on the Spring '97 Anna Sui collection

"Two forces are always at work in fashion: innocence and its brazen opposite. But what is amazing about Miuccia Prada and Anna Sui, fashion's most conniving designing women, is how they manage always to work both notions into their shows."

WWD on Anna Sui

"Anna Sui is the sorceress of New York fashion - she definitely has the power to enchant."

The New York Times on Anna Sui's Fall '96 collection

"It is Ms. Sui's method of research, paired with the madness of her creativity, that makes her shows more than inspirational. They are educational, too."

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