A springtime trip to see a Pre-Raphaelites exhibition at the Museo San Domenico in Forli, Italy, inspired Anna Sui’s new collection. Back here in New York, Rossetti’s Prosperine and The Beguiling of Merlin and Love Among the Ruins by Edward Burne-Jones appeared on her mood board wall, among many other paintings of the period. “He could’ve been a dress designer,” she said of Burne-Jones, “the way he painted clothing.” But she was also drawn to his romanticism. “Imagination, folklore, fairy tales—I think it’s what we’re needing,” she said. Also: “I think we’re on the verge of a big change in fashion, moving past this whole minimal period.”
That’s good news to Sui, who has never been much of a minimalist herself. But you shouldn’t expect the loose bodices and flowing sleeves of the frocks depicted in the Rossetti and co.’s paintings. Instead, she lifted from their indigo palette, and created prints, embroideries, and jacquards evocative of their contemporary, the textile designer William Morris, as well as the artist Aubrey Beardsley, who came along a little bit later. The collection includes granny dresses and 1940s dresses and a matching softly structured jacket and midi-skirt, all of which have the vintage flavor distinctive of Sui’s work. An ivory lace minidress with a violet bow, meanwhile, channels early 1990s Courtney Love. Thanks to Instagram and TikTok, Sui has young fans for whom riot-grrl grunge seems as ancient-history as the Pre-Raphaelites. For them there are tweedy minis, shrunken logo tees, and grandpa cardigans.