THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Monday, October 7, 2019 |A
ery, photocopied art, retro silhou-
ettes, patterned paper, mouthwater-
ing 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 col-
lections 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 lan-guorous Pre-Raphaelites to sunny
Flower Power to the Pig-Pen aes-
thetic of grunge, the Anna Sui en-
ergy 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 bal-
ance—the silhouettes and stylings of
her recurring archetypes, 12 of which
are presented here.
Americana, Androgyny, Fairytale,
Grunge, Hippie & Rockstar, Mod,New York
IS THE ECHOin the title intentional?
“The World of Suzie Wong,” a film
starring the heartbreaking charmer
Nancy Kwan and the surly heart-
throb William Holden, had its pre-
miere 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-gen-
eration Chinese-American, think of
her? I’m confident she’d have an an-
swer, because Anna Sui has been cul-
ture hungry from day one, collecting
images from movies, rock posters,
fashion glossies, icons of style, mu-
seums and more in a personal ar-
chive 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 cura-
tor Barbara Paris Gifford—is on the
museum’s fourth and fifth floors. It is
best to begin on five, where the ele-
vator 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 over-
head; 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 rep-
resented by a life-size likeness—“Di-
ana Vreeland’s Vogue was my bible,”
says Ms. Sui, quoted in explanatory
text. Carnaby Street and Biba bou-
tique, “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 imag-
EXHIBITION REVIEW
‘Sui’ Generis Fashion
DesignerAnnaSuidrawsinspirationfromsourcesasvariedaslanguorous
Pre-Raphaelites,sunnyFlowerPower,andthePig-Penaestheticofgrunge
BYLAURAJACOBS
Nomad, Punk, Retro, Schoolgirl,
Surfer and Victorian—the approxi-
mately 70 looks inspired by these
archetypes are displayed through-
out 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 sil-
ver birches, is enchanting, with
touches of Icelandic folklore, Mit-
teleuropa 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 Victo-
rian. I remember the hippie ’70s—
and none of those slapdash outfits
looked like these, with such peacock
color, calibrated proportion, and pa-
nache. A perfect example of Ms. Sui’s
unerring sleight of hand is the Victo-
rian “Royal Multicolor Ensemble” of
Fall 2017. As the label tells us, “Six-
teenth-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—tran-
scends time and place to say “now.”
The fourth floor continues with
more archetypes, but set in the con-
text of Ms. Sui’s immersive fashion
shows and ancillary products. An ac-
cessories room displays decoupage
purses, beaded jewelry, shoes, eye-
glasses and cosmetics, all created by
designers who happen to be—à laAnna Sui, left; mood boards for Ms.
Sui’s ‘Pop-timistic’ collection, above;
an ensemble in Ms. Sui’s Spring 1994
fashion show, rightBloomsbury—like-minded friends.
Interestingly, chinoiserie does not
appear to be one of Ms. Sui’s domi-
nant archetypes, though in the No-
mad 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 chry-
santhemums 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 for-
ever overlapping histories, identities,
races, cultures and dreams.The World of Anna Sui
Museum of Arts and Design,
through Feb. 23, 2020Ms. Jacobs is the Arts Intel Report
editor for the weekly newsletter
Air Mail.FROM TOP: JENNA BASCOM; MIGUEL FLORES-VIANNA; RAOUL GATCHALIANLIFE & ARTS
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