Anna Sui Spring 2027: Mischief and Wonder

by · WWD
Anna Sui Spring 2027 Ready-to-Wear CollectionCourtesy of Anna Sui

After more than four decades in fashion, Anna Sui remains just as curious as ever.

Her spring collection, “Wonderment,” began with something she couldn’t identify. Sui was leafing through an old issue of Vogue in search of a ’70s hairstyle by legendary hairdresser Era Gallant when something blurry on the walls behind it caught her eye. “What the hell is that?” she remembered thinking.

Down the rabbit hole she went.

They were fantasy paintings by Howard Gardiner Cushing at The Ledges, his family’s eccentric Newport home. Sui had somehow never encountered them, and the thrill of discovery proved catalytic. Art Nouveau, fairy tales, water lilies and mother-of-pearl followed — references Sui metabolized rather than reproduced.

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The resulting clothes were romantic but mischievous. A faded palette of mauve, lavender, old rose, cream and denim blue washed over lace, crochet, point d’esprit and satin. Sheer mesh floated over fluorescent lingerie; an iridescent T-shirt was layered with satin-striped plaid and chartreuse crushed-velvet pants. Appliquéd denim and jorts mussed up the prettiness, while Erickson Beamon — Sui’s jewelry collaborator since the beginning — translated the paintings’ luminosity into fantastical mother-of-pearl, abalone and shell pieces. John Fluevog fashioned vintage textiles and fur trim into boudoir-ish slippers.

For all the accumulation, there was air between the layers. Sui intentionally kept fabrics sheer and floaty, allowing lingerie and flashes of color to flicker underneath. And because she styles every look herself, the improbable collisions — chartreuse against lavender, lingerie with denim, iridescence against something homespun — were entirely her own.

Yet some of the collection’s most seemingly handcrafted surfaces came from machines. New digital techniques allowed jacquard, print, embroidery and sequins to coexist in a single textile with a complexity that Sui said once would have required hours of handwork and pushed the clothes beyond her price range. She embraced the technology without fetishizing it. Engineered embroidery existed alongside hand crochet, New York embroidery and hand-dyed flowers from M&S Schmalberg. The machine didn’t supplant the hand; it gave Sui another tool with which to indulge her curiosity.

That same instinct extends to people. Her history with Fluevog dates to 1993; artist Ellen Berkenblit remains a collaborator decades on. Marc Jacobs, Vera Wang, Debbie Harry and Karen Elson turned out in support, while Elson’s daughter, Scarlett White, wore a Swarovski-embellished reprise of a tiny dress Kate Moss wore in the ’90s. Fashion generations folded into one another as easily as the clothes.

At the National Arts Club, Sui’s favored old-world New York setting of recent seasons, the contrast came alive. Against the visual gravity of dark wood, parquet floors and stained glass, lithe models seemed to float through the rooms, sheer layers fluttering behind them and iridescent surfaces catching the light. They looked less like fairy-tale heroines than mischievous interlopers who had wandered into somebody’s drawing room.

“Wonderment,” then, felt less like a theme than a disposition. After all these years, Sui still delights in finding something she hasn’t seen before.

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