Anna Sui gave her resort offering a name: Neo Romantic, and as always, it was well researched. She looked at an exhibition of the work of the fashion illustrator Christian Bérard in Monaco; “I like what his drawings evoke,” she said, pointing to the delicate, dreamy lines of his sketches on her moodboard. She studied the “Colour Revolution” show at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford; the season’s greens and purples were inspired by the era’s surprisingly vibrant aniline dyes. Also influential were the Sargeant exhibitions in both London and New York. “The way Sargeant painted women, clothes, and textiles—there’s laces that just pop at you when you’re looking at them, the little corsages. I’m just in love with all his work,” she said.
Her magpie’s instincts are in full flower here. There’s cameo jewelry by Classic Hardware (a label she personally wears) and colorful John Fluevog-designed clog sandals. Some of the models carry long-handled bags that look like stuffed animals. Labubus have nothing on these craft-class creations; in fact, they’re inspired by the stuffed animals from the 1960s Sui long collected. Bringing her collector’s eye to everything she does is what makes Sui relevant more than 40 years after launching her namesake brand.
The little skirt suits that everyone’s been doing? Hers comes in a black-and-white wallpaper motif, giving it the look of a vintage find. A shrunken lace blouse with tone-on-tone crystal beads on the collar and a row of delicate carved buttons looks similarly like a treasure unearthed from a different time; ditto the lacy bed jacket that tops a zigzag knit bikini. The strapless little black dress with the sweetheart neckline would be picture-perfect for prom, something mom and daughter could both agree on.
Sui believes fashion needs more romance. Quiet luxury and its more reasonably priced equivalents aren’t going to rouse anyone out of the shopping doldrums. But another thing that keeps Sui going is her practicality. When the tariffs made sourcing materials from her usual suppliers impossible, she went elsewhere. “We found all these great fabrics in Turkey,” she said. “You have to rise to the occasion.”
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