Anna Sui found spring inside an old issue of Vogue, chasing a seventies hairstyle and stumbling instead on fantasy paintings by Howard Gardiner Cushing that hung in a Newport family home. The thrill of discovery she calls wonderment fed a romantic, mischievous collection.
For all the accumulation there was air, Sui keeping fabrics floaty and letting improbable collisions, chartreuse against lavender, lingerie under denim, carry her hand.
A faded palette of mauve, lavender, old rose, cream, and denim blue washed over lace, crochet, and satin, while sheer mesh floated above flashes of lingerie and fluorescent colour.
Art Nouveau, fairy tales, water lilies, and mother-of-pearl rippled through the lineup, references metabolised rather than copied.
Yet some of the most handcrafted-looking surfaces came from machines, new digital techniques that let jacquard, print, embroidery, and sequins coexist within a single textile.
The technology did not supplant the hand but joined it, engineered embroidery sitting beside hand crochet and hand-dyed flowers, a marriage of tools her long, craft-hungry career has earned.
