‘The World of Anna Sui’ has been launched in the Fashion and Textile Museum, London on May 26 2017and will run till October 1, 2017. ‘The World of Anna Sui’ is the first-ever retrospective of an American fashion designer to be held in the UK and the first-ever exhibition in the world to explore the signature rock-n-roll romanticism of this iconic designer with an international cult following.
Anna Sui is one of New York’s most beloved and accomplished designers. Since her first catwalk show in 1991, Sui has become known for creating contemporary original clothing inspired by spectacular amounts of research into vintage fashion and popular culture. She is especially famous for the printed textiles that feature in her collections.
This is the first time an American fashion designer has been the focus of a retrospective exhibition in the UK. ‘The World of Anna Sui’ celebrates both American fashion and the distinctive vision of Sui, whose daring and experimental approach to design has become a mainstay of New York and the international fashion scene. Sui joined New York’s cultural underground at an intensely creative time, forming important relationships in the worlds of fashion, photography, art, music and design. The exhibition looks at Sui’s artistic journey through her creative process, collections, interiors, and collaborations.
The exhibition includes more than 100 head-to-toe ensembles ranging from early looks – such as the mod Carnaby Street schoolgirls worn by supermodels Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell in the first runway show in 1991, to the cowboys and cheerleaders modelled by Gigi and Bella Hadid during the recent Spring/Summer 2017 Americana-themed collection.
Thematically arranged, the exhibition explores Anna Sui’s lifelong engagement with fashion ‘archetypes’, a recurring cast of characters—the rocker, the schoolgirl, the punk, the goth, and the bohemian —motifs that are featured in all her work. From fairy tales, fables and Victoriana to rockers, mods and Americana, Sui researches her current cultural obsessions in detail to create a different story with each collection.
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