Anna Sui: The Enchantress of Fragrance Who Dresses Us in Dreams

Every designer dreams of having a makeup and fragrance line. And that is what truly supports a brand.
— Anna Sui, speaking at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in 2019

Essential Information

Founded: 1981 (fashion label) / 1999 (launch of the fragrance line)

Founder: Anna Sui; Chinese name: 蕭志美 (Xiāo Zhìměi)

Official website: annasui.com  / Official Japanese website: annasui.co.jp

The Founder and the Origins of the Brand

An “Outsider’s” Dream, Born in Suburban Detroit

Anna Sui was born on August 4, 1955, in Dearborn Heights, a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. Both her parents were Chinese Americans with unusual backgrounds: her father, Paul Sui, studied engineering at the Sorbonne, while her mother, Grace Sui, studied painting in Paris.

Yet she grew up in a predominantly white, Catholic neighborhood. In an autobiographical book, Sui wrote: “We were the only Chinese family in the neighborhood, and girls were not particularly valued in Chinese families. So my parents left me to my daydreams. That allowed me to take my dreams as far as I liked.” The sense of being different from those around her nurtured a distinctive “world” within her.

「Everything I did my whole childhood was so I could be a designer.」

(Everything I did as a child was so that I could become a designer.)
— Anna Sui

Even as a child, Sui was an avid collector. She carefully organized photographs of models, designers, and boutiques clipped from fashion magazines into a scrapbook she called her “Genius File,” which she packed in her luggage for New York. Her brother also took her to rock concerts in Detroit, where she saw Iggy Pop and MC5 perform. “When I went to concerts, I was drawn not just to the music but to the visual world: the graphics, posters, clothes, and spaces,” she later recalled. Rock’s rebellious spirit and her curiosity about visual expression would eventually become the twin foundations of her design language.

One childhood “revelation” that Sui often recounts was the experience of serving as a flower girl at a wedding. Seeing the wedding party’s coordinated dresses, bags, and shoes, she recalled: “That was my aha moment. I went back to Detroit and announced to my parents that I would move to New York and become a fashion designer.”

An Encounter at Parsons: Steven Meisel and New York Nights

Immediately after graduating from high school, Sui headed to New York and enrolled at Parsons School of Design, where she had long hoped to study. There she met Steven Meisel, who would later become an internationally renowned fashion photographer.

“He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen, and he had such a cool sense of style.”
— Anna Sui, on meeting Meisel

The two bonded over shared interests in fashion, music, and subculture, becoming lifelong friends. Night after night, they went to the Mudd Club and CBGB to see Patti Smith and Blondie perform. “The first time I went to CBGB, I saw Patti Smith, and then we moved to somewhere that looked like a high school gym, and there was Blondie,” Sui recalled.

While studying at Parsons, she worked as a design assistant for a label called Charlie’s Girls, learning the practical side of the industry in New York’s Garment District, a major center of clothing production.

Starting with $300: A Brand Born from Being Fired

After graduating, Sui worked as a designer for several sportswear companies while continuing to create her own collections in her spare time. One day, while she was working at Glenora, buyers from Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s purchased her designs, which appeared in a full-page advertisement in The New York Times. Her employer, however, immediately fired her on the grounds of a “conflict of interest.”

Her final paycheck reportedly left her with just $300. Using that money to make her first collection, Sui launched her own brand from the living room of her Chelsea apartment in 1981.

You have to focus on your dream, even when it goes beyond what seems reasonable. How could this young girl from suburban Detroit possibly make it in New York? It was always a dream.
— Anna Sui

Throughout the 1980s, Sui quietly presented her collections and continued selling them to department stores in the shadow of more famous designers. Her name, however, had yet to reach beyond the industry.

1991: A Historic Runway Show

The turning point came in 1991. Her friends Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista strongly encouraged her, telling her, “You should try it.” Although the models were paid in clothing rather than cash, Campbell, Evangelista, and Christy Turlington all walked the runway, and her first show, held in the Meatpacking District, attracted considerable attention. Sui herself has described it as “one of the biggest breakthroughs of my career.”

The following year, in 1992, she opened her first boutique at 113 Greene Street in SoHo. Purple walls, red floors, and black-lacquered Rococo furniture gave physical form to the aesthetic she had cultivated since decorating her bedroom in high school. The impetus to open the store reportedly came from her friend Zack Carr, who told her, “If you have a place to show your world, people will understand you.”

Expressing my aesthetic outwardly made it clearer. Everything became more iconic.
— Anna Sui

In 1993, she received the Perry Ellis Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA). A story from just before the ceremony is particularly characteristic of her: Barbra Streisand and Donna Karan chased her down a hallway, asking, “Anna, where can we buy your clothes?”

Support from Japan and International Expansion

In the late 1990s, Japanese buyers attending New York Fashion Week became enthusiastic about Sui’s brand. She signed an exclusive distribution and licensing agreement with the department store Isetan, accelerating her international expansion on the strength of explosive popularity in Japan. “Without them [Isetan], the independent Anna Sui brand would not exist today,” Sui has said.

Although she was initially told that “nobody does that,” she signed simultaneous licensing agreements with a German perfume company and a Japanese cosmetics company, stipulating that the two undertake cross-distribution. This forward-looking global strategy laid the foundations for the brand as it exists today.

In 2009, she received the CFDA’s Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award, joining a pantheon that includes Yves Saint Laurent (in Japanese), Giorgio Armani (in Japanese), Ralph Lauren, and Diane von Furstenberg.

The Brand’s Commitments

Fragrance as the “Ultimate Accessory”

For Sui, fragrance is fashion’s “finishing touch,” completing a “head-to-toe” experience of style.

Perfume is the “ultimate accessory,” and for a fashion designer, it is the “completion of the fantasy.”
— Anna Sui

Her fragrance-making process also always begins with a “concept.”

I start with a concept. It has to be part of my world.
— Anna Sui

Her longtime partner in this process is Jérôme Epinette, a perfumer with the French fragrance house Robertet. Sui describes their relationship of trust in these words:

He understands. We are creating fragrance with words. You need someone who understands those words and their magic.
— Anna Sui

Rose lies at the heart of her fragrance-making. During the talk at MAD, Sui revealed that “rose has been the foundation of many of my brand’s perfumes.” Its roots, she says, lie in memories of the rose garden her mother tended at their Michigan home and the lavender-colored tea roses she repeatedly bought at New York’s Union Square Market.

She has also offered this way of judging whether a fragrance is a “hit”:

When a taxi driver tells you, “You smell nice,” you know it is a hit.
— Anna Sui

The Bottle: Another Work of Art

Anna Sui fragrance bottles are designed to make people feel that they want to keep them even after the perfume is gone.

That is one of my obsessions, and I wanted to share it with other people.
— Anna Sui

The original Anna Sui bottle (1999) was lacquered black, embodying the same world as the boutique’s interior. Later came a fairy for Secret Wish, a golden unicorn for Fantasia, and a mermaid for Fantasia Mermaid, with mythological and fairy-tale motifs blossoming in each successive series.

Sui has said that Fantasia’s unicorn-topped bottle was inspired by a shocking-pink unicorn in an advertisement for Schiaparelli gloves illustrated by Andy Warhol. Describing these historical and artistic references, she says, “Anything you love can become inspiration. That is the joy of my work.”

The latest collection, Wild Wonder (2024), pairs simple clear-glass bottles with Art Nouveau-style floral motifs and golden rose-shaped caps, creating a world that is both modern and elegant.

The Fragrance Lineup

Classic (1999): Where It All Began

Launched in 1999, the first creation, Anna Sui, is the signature perfume that laid the foundations for the original lineup. Top notes of raspberry, apricot, and bergamot give way to a heart of Bulgarian rose, jasmine, and Florentine iris, followed by a base of cedarwood, sandalwood, and tonka. It came in a deep black-lacquered bottle matching the interior colors Sui chose for her boutique.

Dolly Girl (2003): Playfulness and Girlhood

Introduced in 2003, Dolly Girl is a fruity floral created by perfumer Benoist Lapouza. Top notes of cinnamon, melon, green apple, and bergamot lead into a heart of magnolia, violet, jasmine, and lily of the valley, followed by an ambery base of raspberry, strawberry, and teakwood. The line embodies Sui’s love of dolls and the playfulness of childhood. Its pink doll-shaped bottle also attracted attention.

Secret Wish (2005): The Founder’s Most-Loved Fragrance

Created by perfumer Michel Almairac of Robertet, Secret Wish is a fragrance to which Sui has confessed a personal attachment, saying that it “will always have a special place” among her lines. Its composition combines top notes of lemon, melon, peach, and tagetes; a heart of pineapple and blackcurrant; and a base of white cedar extract, musk, amber, and sandalwood. A little fairy adorns the transparent bottle.

Fantasia (2017): Into a World of Unicorns

Fantasia, which marked a turning point for the fragrance line in 2017, is a signature creation born of Sui’s long-term collaboration with Jérôme Epinette. Sui describes the perfume as expressing “the dreams and wishes of childhood that remain deep within us even after we grow up.”

It is all about enchantment. In everything I do, I try to transport you to an exotic, faraway place, to a beautiful new world.
— Anna Sui

Its top notes are pink pomelo, cassis, and pink pepper; its heart features violet, orange flower, and raspberry praline; and its base combines golden cypress and Himalayan cedarwood. Asked about the “Fantasia woman,” Sui replied:

Someone who loves to dream, someone who loves to dress up.
— Anna Sui

Spin-offs, or flankers, including Fantasia Mermaid (2019) and Fantasia Rose followed, expanding the Fantasia family into a series. Speaking about Fantasia Rose, Sui said: “Rose is a central flower in many of my designs. It was only natural that its presence should shine in the world of Fantasia.”

Wild Wonder (2024): The Culmination of 25 Years

To mark the fragrance line’s 25th anniversary, five creations by Jérôme Epinette were announced in 2024: Dew Fields, Electric Whisper, Mystic Luna, Thorn of a Rose, and Utopia Mist. Rose notes are woven into all five, paying tribute to the flower that has symbolized Sui’s fragrances for a quarter of a century.

Each fragrance makes you feel as though you have been transported into a dream world.
— Anna Sui

The Changing License: Wella, P&G, and Inter Parfums

The first fragrance was launched in 1999 under an initial licensing agreement with Wella AG (or a predecessor of P&G). Procter & Gamble (P&G) subsequently held the license, but in June 2011 a ten-year exclusive worldwide licensing agreement was signed with Inter Parfums, Inc., effective January 1, 2012, with two five-year renewal options. Inter Parfums President Andy Clarke commented at the time that he had “high expectations for expanding the brand’s fragrance presence in North America, Europe, and the Middle East,” while Sui herself said she was “very excited about the opportunity for growth.”

By the Way…

• Anna Sui also speaks candidly about her personal fragrance history. She still treasures the original gift box of the Chanel No. 5 her mother wore, and she used Robert Piguet’s Fracas, relaunched in 1996. Of Kenzo King Kong, released in 1980, she said: “When I heard it was being discontinued, I bought about 30 bottles. I am sure they have gone off by now, but I still have them all in their boxes.”
• At The World of Anna Sui exhibition held at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in 2019, the entire fourth floor was filled with the scent of Fantasia. Incorporating fragrance into the exhibition space itself was another characteristically Sui pursuit of a “complete environment.”
• In 2009, the brand’s motto, “Live Your Dreams,” also became the title of a perfume. Everything follows a consistent thread.