Anna Sui

Anna SuiLindsay Stockton / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) 

Anna Siu said, "You have to focus on your dreams, even if they go beyond common sense. How could this young girl from the suburbs of Detroit become a success in New York? It was always that dream." 

Anna Sui was said to be a designer who “never panders” by the New York Times, because of her innovative and inspiring designs. Her work in the fashion industry has inspired many other designers around the world. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Anna knew she wanted to be a designer when she was only 4 years old, as she watched her mother sew at home and collected fabric scraps to create outfits for her Barbie dolls and her brother’s army figures. In her teenage years, Anna would create her own garments by buying different pattern pieces of clothes and swapping them into a new piece of art. The moment she read an article about Mia Fonssagrives-Solow in Life magazine, she knew she would be a fashion designer. 

Anna started her career after finishing her second year at Parsons. She started designing rock- and punk-inspired clothing in her apartment the same year and ran her own brand after losing a job from Glenora. Around the 1980s, Anna finally gained a global reputation and attracted much more attention from Japanese fashion powerhouses like Onward Kashiyama. She got the opportunity to move her line into Annette B, which is a showroom created by Annette Breindel. This opportunity had a huge impact on Anna’s career and she gained a big recognition. During this time, she was finally able to move her at-home company out of her apartment and into the garment district. Anna’s dream came true. 

By 1992, Anna opened her first retail store in the Soho District of New York. Her store was known for its red floors, antique black furniture, and signature doll head mannequins and her self-painted purple walls. Later that year, Anna won the CFDA Perry Ellis Award for new talent. She expands her brand worldwide in places such as Hollywood and Tokyo. 

Anna Sui brand categories include many fashion lines, footwear, cosmetics, fragrances, eyewear, jewelry, accessories, home goods, and a gift line. Her success in the fashion industry named her one of the “Top 5 Fashion Icons of the Decade,” from TIME Magazine, and she won the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 2009.

Other than following her dream in the fashion industry, Anna also created dreams for others. She is part of many charity organizations and has been involved in several fundraising efforts by numerous organizations. In 1996, Sui designed GMC Yukon as part of a collaboration called 'Concept:Cure' between General Motors and the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Inc. (CFDA); the car was sold at a silent auction and the proceeds went towards breast cancer research. In 2001, she collaborated with American actress Ellen Barkin to create an outfit to raise money for the Leary Firefighters Foundation (LFF), following the attacks on September 11th that year. Throughout her active years, Anna has been involved with several more charity and community projects like her Save the Garment Center, forest restoration in Malaysia with the World Wide Fund for Nature, an effort to raise money for the Japan Disaster Relief Fund after the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, and more. Not only has Anna Sui followed her dream of becoming a successful fashion designer, but she also made dreams for others. And that is why she is a hero.