Anna Sui remembers spending hours with her mother looking at fabrics at downtown Detroit’s Hudson’s department store, imagining the dresses they could become.
Those trips helped spark a dream that would take her to New York, lead to a career in fashion and, now, bring more than 100 looks from her archive back to metro Detroit.
"The World of Anna Sui" opens to the public on Oct. 21 at the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills and runs through Feb. 28, 2027.
"It was really my dream to have it in Michigan," Sui said in an interview with the Detroit Free Press.
A homecoming at Cranbrook
For the designer, who was born in Detroit and grew up in Dearborn Heights and West Bloomfield, the exhibition is also a return to a place woven into her family’s history. When relatives visited,
her parents would take the family to Cranbrook on Sundays to see an exhibition or walk the grounds.
"It was just kind of a very special place for us," Sui said.
Her connections have continued through another generation: Her two brothers raised their families in Michigan, and her four nieces and three nephews attended, or are attending, Cranbrook Schools.
The exhibition, which debuted in London, explores the influences and imagined worlds that have shaped Sui’s work across more than three decades of runway collections, beginning with her first show in 1991.
"Anna's work has always reflected her vision of a complete world," Dennis Nothdruft, head of exhibitions at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London and curator of the exhibition, said in a news release. "It was important for us to bring visitors into that universe through the concept and scenography of the exhibition."
It is organized around 12 recurring archetypes: Americana, androgyny, fairytale, grunge, mod, hippie/rockstar, nomad, punk, retro, schoolgirl, surfer and Victorian. Clothing, textiles, accessories, cosmetics, photographs and other materials show how she draws on music, art, literature, film and history to build those worlds.
Re-created inspiration boards offer a closer look at that process, showing how photographs and other images help her develop a collection's colors and story.
Sui still draws inspiration from the fashion magazines she read growing up in Michigan in the 1960s, including Vogue under Diana Vreeland, Mademoiselle and Seventeen. A favorite was Seventeen’s back-to-school issue, which helped inspire the black-and-white houndstooth, patent leather and mod styling of her first collection.
"Those were my Bibles," Sui said. "I still think about them, and I go back and refer to them all the time because there are always certain elements that I treasure, and I want to try to capture that in the collection."
As a flower girl at her uncle’s wedding in New York, Sui told her parents she planned to move there and become a fashion designer. Later, a Life magazine story about two young women who attended Parsons School of Design in New York, moved to Paris and had a boutique opened for them by Elizabeth Taylor gave her a path to follow.
She shaped her education around getting into Parsons, applied early, and was accepted at the end of her junior year of high school. New York has been her home ever since.
Decades of designs find a new audience
Now, the Cranbrook exhibition brings decades of her work back to Michigan, with additions that reflect both her Detroit connections and her appeal to a younger generation.
Among them are the black-and-yellow employee uniforms she designed for musician Jack White’s Third Man Records in 2012 and an Anna Sui babydoll minidress worn by singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo. Both will join the exhibition for the first time at Cranbrook.
For Sui, requests from younger performers such as Rodrigo to wear pieces from her archive are a source of pride.
"I think the thing that makes me the happiest is that people tell me when they look at the exhibition, all of the clothes could be worn today," she said. "So much of it still resonates now."
That interest also reflects the influences she has long brought to her designs.
"There’s so much nostalgia," Sui said. "There’s so much emphasis on vintage style, and my styles always looked vintage. There was always a little bit of flea market, rock and roll and a lot of history all poured into it."
She still makes time to hunt for vintage finds when she returns to metro Detroit. On Sundays when she's in town, Sui visits the Royal Oak flea market, and also explores vintage and antique stores in Royal Oak and Ferndale. She also stops at Third Man Records and nearby stores to shop.
For young aspiring designers visiting the exhibition, Sui hopes her work offers encouragement to pursue their own ambitions. Building a career took years of focus, hard work and learning her craft.
"People need to believe in themselves and really focus on what it is that they’re trying to accomplish," she said.
Sui will be at the store Coup D'état on Detroit's east side on Oct. 19 at 7 p.m. for a book signing.
For exhibition and registration information, visit cranbrookartmuseum.org.
Contact Adrienne Roberts: amroberts@freepress.com
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Anna Sui brings decades of fashion home to the Cranbrook Art Museum
