‘Sui’ Generis Fashion – Wall Street Journal

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Is the echo in the title intentional? “The World of Suzie Wong,” a film starring the heartbreaking charmer

Nancy Kwan

and the surly heartthrob

William Holden,

had its premiere in 1960, when Anna Sui was 8 years old and living in a suburb of Detroit. Set in Hong Kong, the film sees Suzie facing life’s raw deals with imagination, rigor and wit. What did young Ms. Sui, a first-generation Chinese-American, think of her? I’m confident she’d have an answer, because Anna Sui has been culture hungry from day one, collecting images from movies, rock posters, fashion glossies, icons of style, museums and more in a personal archive of retinal imprints. “The World of Anna Sui,” now at the Museum of Arts and Design, zeroes in on Ms. Sui’s acute eye, but it’s also about her heart—what she loved from the get-go and still loves today.

The exhibition—originally curated by

Dennis Nothdruft

for the Fashion and Textile Museum, London, and adapted for MAD by assistant curator

Barbara Paris Gifford

—is on the museum’s fourth and fifth floors. It is best to begin on five, where the elevator opens on a space filled with Ms. Sui’s formative influences: period posters in psychedelic greens, pinks and oranges, their trippy graphics acknowledging Art Nouveau curves; Tiffany-style lamps glowing overhead; and along the far wall fashions by the textile genius

Zandra Rhodes,

the madcap colorist Betsey Johnson and the experimental Norma Kamali. Fashion oracle

Diana Vreeland

is represented by a life-size likeness—“Diana Vreeland’s Vogue was my bible,” says Ms. Sui, quoted in explanatory text. Carnaby Street and Biba boutique, “It” girls

Jane Holzer

and

Anita Pallenberg

also get a nod.

In the largest gallery, an entire wall is covered with the four mood boards that set the tone for Ms. Sui’s Fall 2019 collection, “Pop-timistic.” It’s a charged spectacle, these four boards collaged with vintage imagery, photocopied art, retro silhouettes, patterned paper, mouthwatering fabric samples, swatches and trims. Every inch is covered in hues of violet, forest green, opaline blue, fuchsia and tangerine—the bright palette of Pop, but with the deeper saturation of stained glass. This wall is a window into the intense vision required to make a collection.

Ms. Sui, who has produced 84 collections since her first runway show, in 1991, is among the generation of American designers that includes

Marc Jacobs,

Isaac Mizrahi,

Todd Oldham

and

Vivienne Tam.

Of these, she is the most bohemian. From languorous Pre-Raphaelites to sunny Flower Power to the Pig-Pen aesthetic of grunge, the Anna Sui energy is counterculture, Youthquake, artsy-craftsy and club-kid. She is not held spellbound by the couture, as male designers often are, not trying to re-create Paris construction on a ready-to-wear budget. Those mood boards are actually story boards that mix and match, seemingly willy-nilly—but actually with exquisite balance—the silhouettes and stylings of her recurring archetypes, 12 of which are presented here.

Americana, Androgyny, Fairytale, Grunge, Hippie & Rockstar, Mod, Nomad, Punk, Retro, Schoolgirl, Surfer and Victorian—the approximately 70 looks inspired by these archetypes are displayed throughout the two floors on island-like platforms, with backdrops that are often the very ones used in the original runway shows. The tableau of Fairytale, set against painted silver birches, is enchanting, with touches of Icelandic folklore, Mitteleuropa kingdoms and Arthurian legend. Ms. Sui has even worked a fully dimensional white horse into one of the men’s looks of Fall 1998.

Splendid is the tableau that blends Hippie & Rockstar with Victorian. I remember the hippie ’70s—and none of those slapdash outfits looked like these, with such peacock color, calibrated proportion, and panache. A perfect example of Ms. Sui’s unerring sleight of hand is the Victorian “Royal Multicolor Ensemble” of Fall 2017. As the label tells us, “Sixteenth-century Elizabethan England, eighteenth-century colonial Peru, and nineteenth-century Victoriana” are combined with Noël Coward’s 1945 play, “Blithe Spirit.” Which ones are where? Who knows! The result—a rakish jacket in a bold medallion brocade of jewel tones and gold threads, worn over a flowing dress printed with hothouse flowers—transcends time and place to say “now.”

The fourth floor continues with more archetypes, but set in the context of Ms. Sui’s immersive fashion shows and ancillary products. An accessories room displays decoupage purses, beaded jewelry, shoes, eyeglasses and cosmetics, all created by designers who happen to be—à la Bloomsbury—like-minded friends.

Interestingly, chinoiserie does not appear to be one of Ms. Sui’s dominant archetypes, though in the Nomad section there is a “Chinoiserie Ensemble.” It’s from Fall 2014, when the Chinese-American actress

Anna May Wong

served as Ms. Sui’s muse. Silk pajama pants printed with chrysanthemums are certainly Asian, but the peasant top is embellished with American Indian motifs, and over that there’s a puffer jacket with a camouflage pattern. Nothing is pure; everything mixes. Anna Sui’s world—just like the real one—is made of forever overlapping histories, identities, races, cultures and dreams.

—Ms. Jacobs is the Arts Intel Report editor for the weekly newsletter
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