Anna Sui Fall 2025: A Madcap Mix and Match Take on Modernity

An astute student of history and pop culture, Anna Sui turned her eye to the world of the “madcap heiress” from the 1930s for fall 2025. Women who the society pages of the time would rabidly report on, charting both their successes and falls. “These women inherited massive fortunes and spent it all on jewelry, art and men,” she said during a preview at her studio in the Garment District. Barbara Hutton, Doris Duke, Peggy Guggenheim and the film “Bringing Up Baby” were among the lives and cultural moments she explored — their penchant for luxuries alongside their lack of inhibition, her show notes cheekily read. She set the mood at The National Arts Club with Rita Hayworth’s “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” purring over the loudspeakers — the exact kind of place those women would have frequented and where today’s version might come to hear the latest literary panel.

There was a striking mix of ideas here that could clash, but under Sui’s exacting styling and taste looked impossibly chic. A caramel faux mink over a rust toned satin bow blouse and feathered miniskirt worn with leopard print shoes — throw on a vintage looking brooch and you’re out the door. Most pieces looked vintage, a part of the fashion conversation now but a category Sui has thought about in stores and on the runway for years. Case in point: A bronze Fortuny pleated top and skirt under a swing coat. Stripes, zigzags, tweeds, riding jackets over jodhpurs — add on all the textures until the sartorial dissonance makes it unique.

Each look piled on the accessories: faux fur stoles, muffs and gloves, long satin scarves and cat-eyed eyewear, even a direct nod to Peggy Guggenheim with a reproduction of the butterfly glasses she so loved to wear. It was maximalism of the past that felt modern. Alessandro Michele lives in that lane now but Sui has been carving the path for decades. “I remember going to school with somebody that had all designer pieces, but she would have the weirdest mix. A handbag with beautiful shoes and then probably her mother’s jacket or something. And I just love the way that looked,” Sui said.

The designer has been here for decades, paving the way in New York City, not thinking about trends but rather making pieces that are authentically for her customer, and it shows.