Editor’s note: This year, in advance of her 45th year in business, Anna Sui published a book on her collections from the ’90s. To celebrate that, and as part of Vogue Runway’s ongoing efforts to document the history of fashion shows, we are closing out 2025 by adding two newly digitized shows from that era to the site. This spring 1995 collection was presented in New York on November 2, 1994, in the tents in Bryant Park.
For fall 1995 designers took the idea of looking back to new lengths. They “pillaged the past relentlessly—and quite literally—for inspiration. Call it dial-a-decade!” wrote Vogue. At Anna Sui the past is always present, but put through a modern filter. Looking back 30 years to this show, she explained her thinking: “The ’70s—’40s style throughout.”
This outing had several “chapters,” opening with gangsters and dolled-up molls. Kate Moss and James Iha strolled down the catwalk in shiny leather-look chintzed pinstripe. She paired her jacket with short-shorts and a ciggy; he chose a fedora and metallic blue nail polish. These hard-boiled looks were tempered with pretty printed dresses, a style that became a hit of the season, according to the magazine. Mingling among the somewhat stereotypical cherry prints was a Sui special. After the war, she explained, Zika Asher commissioned famous artists to make prints for his company, Zika textiles. The ones Sui recreated were dreamed up by Christian “Bébé” Bérard, who was a frequent Vogue contributor, and whose work the designer continues to cite 30 years later.
Representing “pulp novels, movies, and comics fantasy characters,” were three nurse/waitresses wearing transparent uniforms of coated PVC in Easter egg colors, and each with a custom name tag brooch by Erickson Beamon. This chapter had a Hawaiian tropical theme, complete with leis, fringe, and prints with motifs like shells, palm trees, sandy beaches, and hibiscus flowers; one even incorporated the word aloha.
Sunny days segued into slinky nights with, Sui wrote, “lace masked dominatrixes and leather jackets.” The designer closed things out with high glamour in metallic lamé, that referenced the shimmering languor of Jean Harlow and the sexy sportiness of Esther Williams. James Coviello, a regular Sui collaborator, created both the metallic wigs and the straw, feather, and flower toppers with tulle veils. Irving Penn photographed Kate Moss in one of these pretty posy-like confections for the January 1995 issue of Vogue.
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