A Fashionable Life: Anna Sui

She’s always very feminine, but a little bit rock and roll too. She’s very vintage but very trend. There is always a defiance behind it all. Is she a fairy princess or a witch, or both?” says Anna Sui of her ideal customer, as we browse the eclectic closet of her New York apartment. Perhaps inadvertently or even deliberately, she’s just described herself. This is a woman who thinks nothing of running up two flights of stairs in her party dress (anything from a kaftan acquired from a Liz Taylor auction to a vintage Zandra Rhodes) to the entertainment annex of her Greenwich Village digs (When her own apartment on the ninth floor overflowed, and another became available on the 11^th, she took it). She calls it her dollhouse. It’s really true because I’ll travel around the world and find little objects and things to put up in this apartment. It’s a little display place.”

If you’ve ever been to an Anna Sui store (a veritable boudoir of intrigue where floors are invariably painted scarlet red and walls mauve) you’ll find it hard to believe that her own inner sanctum follows a strictly monochromatic color scheme. “I had so many black and white things that for some reason I got fixated on making it all black and white, which people probably found different for me, because they probably expected me to do everything in purple and red!” Anna laughs. Every design icon Iris Apfel) to the furniture comprises an anthology of anecdotes. Most of her pieces are flea market finds and Anna is proud to admit that many even come from Anthropology, although everything was swathed in black lacquer with gold accents, reflecting Anna’s signature style and her proud Oriental roots. And then there’s all that’s on display. There is a collection of rock portraits given to her by photographers such as Linda McCartney and Jim Marshell, a menagerie of papier mache heads from Gemma Taccogna and an array of decorative objet, including, but certainly not limited to, black Viennese carved crystal lamps, a Korean inlaid table and a curious collection of trade signs – a pair of over-scaled scissors and glasses among them. She’s even got a story to tell about the pillows that cascade over her chaise “One of the young ladies that worked in my store in LA made those one year and gave them to me for my birthday. They were such a treat!” In fact, there’s even a story to the chaise – it’s upholstered in a fabric from one of Anna’s own collections.

But the scene in her first apartment was far different. It was an archetypal Chelsea loft (the Chelsea of decades past, mind you, not today’s home of hip and highline). In one corner stood a rack Anna’s creations (in fact, this rack spoiled her floors so badly, that she was forced to redo them, choosing her now signature red over a boring wood tone), and there was little furniture. “I never wanted furniture, I never wanted a couch, I wasn’t into any of that,” she recalls. She had other priorities having just been fired from her job and Glenora because she had the audacity to share a booth with friends to showcase her designs at a local trade show, garnering the interest of department stores and (gasp) the New York Times! But what Anna lacked in interior adornments and employment she made up for in house guests – the likes of superstar fashion photog Steve Meizel and supermodel friends like Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista. It is this motley crew, combined with a little coaxing from non other than Madonna that prompted Anna to go all out in her first fashion show (Conveniently Naomi and Linda were on hand to walk for her). “The first fashion show I went to was in Paris with Madonna. We had picked up her coat and she said, ‘Anna, I have a surprise for you,’ and she was wearing my dress. That gave me confidence. I thought here’s someone who could have anything in the world and she was wearing my dress.” Recalls Anna.

Recognition followed, with Anna being named one of TIME’s top fashion designers and winning the prestigious CFDA Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award. I have never been part of the mass of fashion, I have always done my own thing. I’ve always been so separate so it was a big surprise to me when I was given the Lifetime Achievement award because I never expected it. I never even thought about it! It was one of the most thrilling moments when I got that phone call from {CFDA President} Diana Von Furstenberg,” she says of fashion’s ultimate honor. But she’s showing no signs of slowing down. Her Fall/Winter 2014 collection inspired by oriental design and chinoiseire through the Deco lens of the Western world, has already received plaudits by fashion critics. Based on the success of her fragrance La Vie de Boheme, a duo of more intense scents aptly named La Nuit de Boheme launch this summer around the world. As our play date in Annas’s dollhouse comes to a close, I spritz on some Nuit de Boheme and am ready to face the world, richer from the inspiring success story that Anna has imparted to me. Which Anna Sui girl am I -- perhaps the rock star for this balmy Greenwich Village afternoon.

By Ayesha Khan, Photographs by Christopher Sturman