Anna Sui puts on a pop-tastic NY Fashion Week show

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/02/2019 (2762 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NEW YORK – Bella Hadid and Kaia Gerber looked positively pop-tastic on the New York Fashion Week runway of Anna Sui’s 1960s-inspired show where short, teased wigs in groovy hues of blue, purple and pink took centre stage.

The spiky hair was the perfect complement to Sui’s Motown soundtrack and wall of vintage poster art, the latter being something she’s fond of collecting. Hadid and fellow models Taylor Hill and Dilone posed in front of the wall before Gerber joined the group, climbing a ladder to hang a poster herself as she opened the show Monday.

Sui was in her generational element as guests who included director Sofia Coppola looked on from her front row seat.

For a ’60s fan, the clothes were to die. There were bright purple tights, paisley coats, plenty of velvet and mod-looking minis.

“I think that you can see my first collection in this show,” Sui told The Associated Press backstage. “I think you can see a lot of like my upbringing in this show, hence the Motown music, hence psychedelic posters. I grew up in Detroit and it was a music town and music is so important to all my work, so I really wanted to celebrate that.”

She aptly dubbed her fall collection Poptimistic.

Sui outsized her trims in giant rickrack and jewel-toned ostrich feathers, all styled with the punky wigs adorned with little bows on top. She put out pony skin boots with pom-poms running down the legs and chunky stone brooches and necklaces. Her teal, fuchsia and emerald tights added an abundance of glitter.

Sui said in show notes she wanted the collection to be about vibrant, joyful and super-saturated colour.

“I based the palette on the neon bright colours of Victor Moscoso’s psychedelic posters, and the fancifully colored storyboards Mary Blair created for Walt Disney, especially for Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan,” she wrote.

Sui filled her mood board with those images and more, of butterflies and sunflowers, the handbills from the Grande Ballroom in Detroit by Gary Grimshaw and Carl Lundgren, Antonio Lopez drawings done for Fashion of the Times, the sun from David Palladini’s Aquarian Tarot Deck, advertising illustrations and Richard Avedon photographs.

“The backdrop for the show recreates my mood board in colossal size. The head curator of a new museum in New York called Poster House, Angelina Lippert, visited my studio to advise me on the selection,” Sui wrote in her notes.

Coppola has known Sui for a long time.

“I’m always excited to see what she makes,” she told the AP, “and I think especially because she’s a woman and loves clothes, she really understands what’s fun to wear.”