Much like the gripping twists and turns of a good mystery novel, Anna Sui’s AW24 collection — WHODUNNIT!!! — had us flipping the page for more. Drawing inspiration from Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and all the tweed, argyle, and fair isles that come with the character, the designer brought the English countryside and old London to modern-day New York. “Every collection has a fantasy person,” Sui tells me after the show. “It could be, you know, a red-haired curly woman in the mountains of Scotland or I’ve had Chinese influences, it was Anna May Wong, or it could be Twiggy, or it could be a mixture.”
Although even without knowing Miss Marple’s influence on the collection, watching models walk down the hardwood floors at The Strand’s Rare Book Room, against shelves and shelves of timeless books, it was quite easy to identify the looks’ inspiration. Matching their spines in both hue and level of detail, the pieces seemed to jump off of the pages behind them, much like magic. But, of course, let’s not judge a book by its cover — for beyond the instant recognisable connection, there was so much more research that went into the designs that wowed the audience.
Throughout the collection, Sui worked with the romantic Evellina Vintage, a long-time friend and long-awaited collaborator. “Evellina’s one of my favourite vintage dealers. And for years I would look forward to her vintage shows. We got to be friends and we started talking about how we should do a collaboration, but I couldn’t figure out exactly how to do it. But when I was working on the collection, I came up with the concept. And I went to one of the vintage shows and I said, ‘Evellina, I figured it out. We’re gonna do it this way.’ And she liked it.”
Bringing the old and new together, the designer also looked to the contemporary, sparkling glamour of Clio Peppiatt — who created custom handbags for the show.
