Anna Sui

Biography

Anna Sui (born August 4, 1964) is an American fashion designer. She was named one of the "Top 5 Fashion Icons of the Decade", and in 2009 earned the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), joining the ranks of Yves Saint Laurent, Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren, and Diane von Furstenberg. Her brand categories include several fashion lines, footwear, cosmetics, fragrances, eyewear, jewelry, accessories and home goods.

Sui moved to New York and attended Parsons, but after finishing her second year,  Sui was hired in 1975 by Erica Elias' junior clothing label Charlie's Girls, where she learned by designing for sportswear labels and doing styling on the photography shoots of friend and former Parsons' classmate Steven Meisel.

Sui's work as a stylist for Meisel's shoots featured in the Italian magazine Lei specifically was very well received. After the closing of Charlie's Girls, Sui worked for several other sportswear designers including Bobbie Brooks and Simultanee.

During this time, she began designing and making clothes out of her apartment. Sui stated that she was inspired to branch out on her own by a desire to dress rock stars and people who attended their concerts. 

Indeed, during this period, the majority of her personal business was focused on targeting sales to music stores. While working for the sportswear company Glenora, she brought her collection of five pieces to a New York trade show and caught the attention of New York department stores Bloomingdale's and Macy's.

A few weeks later, in August 1979, those clothes were featured in a full-page Macy's ad in the Sunday edition of The New York Times. The manager at Glenora, where Sui was still on the payroll, was furious when he saw the advertisement in the Times and fired her on the spot. 

Left without a job, Sui took her $300 in savings and started a business out of a little corner of the living room in her apartment. For several years Sui ran the company out of her apartment, doing odd jobs for spare income and reinvesting every penny of earnings into her business.