The designer Anna Sui is often framed as a 1990s darling. As interest in that decade’s fashion and culture has surged, she has become something of a present-day darling, as well.
There is a traveling exhibition chronicling her artistic process, along with a recently published book revisiting her work in the ’90s. Old Navy introduced a collaboration with Ms. Sui last fall, just months after the release of a Barbie doll made in her likeness.
Her designs — girlish, preppy and grungy at once — have proliferated on resale platforms like Depop and the RealReal. They have also been embraced by Generation Z celebrities like Olivia Rodrigo, Lola Tung and Addison Rae — none of whom were born when Ms. Sui first became a star in the New York fashion world and beyond. On Saturday, Ms. Sui will show her fall 2026 collection at New York Fashion Week.
Though cultural nostalgia has played a role in the recent Anna Sui-assance, there are other forces behind it. A new generation of Sui family members — who once sat cross-legged on the floor at Ms. Sui’s shows — has helped the designer and her namesake label reach a new audience. All are Ms. Sui’s nieces, all grew up in Michigan (like Ms. Sui) and all were born in the 1990s.
Isabelle Sui, 31, is the brand’s vice president, overseeing the business and developing growth strategies.
Jeannie Sui Wonders, 32, has had a hand in the visual identity of the brand by shooting some of its campaigns and product imagery.
Chase Sui Wonders, 29, the actress known for her roles in “The Studio” and “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” is the label’s de facto brand ambassador, appearing in campaigns and wearing Anna Sui onscreen and on red carpets.
“It’s just great being able to work with all of them and have them part of this,” said Ms. Sui, who grew up in the suburbs of Detroit and is 73.
Her business, which she started in 1981, is small. There are 30 employees, but that was not always the case. “For so many years, it was kind of lonely,” said Ms. Sui, whose brother, Robert Sui, has also worked for her company, overseeing its finances.
It is a point of pride for Ms. Sui that, after more than four decades, she is still the sole owner of her brand. She has watched peers — Marc Jacobs, Kate Spade and Tommy Hilfiger among them — sell their namesake brands, or stakes in them, to other companies.
“In the 2000s, everything became so corporate,” she said. “I don’t have a boss that’s stepping on my head saying, ‘Bottom line, bottom line.’”
That independence has allowed Ms. Sui to keep some of her manufacturing in the garment district of Manhattan, long after many American designers moved their operations outside the United States to factories in Latin America and Asia, where labor and materials are generally less expensive.
It has also allowed her to control the quantity of clothing her brand produces. “Why make 200 pieces of something and you’re only going to sell 75?” she said. “What do you do with the rest?”
Independence has also given Ms. Sui control over who will help to steer her brand into the future.
Her niece Isabelle Sui’s first role at Anna Sui was as an intern, in 2010. She formally joined the company in 2020, after working at Live Nation. “What I really admire with Anna is that she does always put family first,” said Isabelle, who last year earned a master’s degree in business at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“She’s going to understand business way better than I ever did,” Ms. Sui said of Isabelle.
As vice president of Anna Sui, Isabelle oversees digital strategy, retail collaborations and direct-to-consumer growth. “We’re a small company, so I would say everyone doesn’t just wear one hat,” she said. “We’re all supporting each other and learning different things.”
She has also overseen the label’s relationships with nontraditional retailers such as Nuuly, a clothing-rental platform owned by the parent company of Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie. Sky Pollard, Nuuly’s head of product, said Anna Sui was one of the most popular brands among the platform’s users, most of whom are younger than 35.
Ms. Sui’s niece Jeannie Sui Wonders, who holds a degree in art history and film from Harvard, started working for Anna Sui in 2018 as the brand’s creative digital director. Her work has included photographing e-commerce imagery, organizing other photo shoots and directing video ad campaigns.
“We have such a shorthand,” Jeannie said of her relationship with Ms. Sui. “I know her world so well.”
Jeannie, who left her full-time role at Anna Sui in 2021, has also done creative work for brands including Sandy Liang, Rhode and Dr. Martens. She is currently focusing on two film projects, but occasionally still works on shoots for her aunt’s brand.
One of the videos that she directed for Anna Sui was to promote a collection that Ms. Sui designed in partnership with the designer Batsheva Hay. The video starred Jeannie’s younger sister, Chase Sui Wonders, who also graduated from Harvard with a film degree.
Chase, who described her aunt’s clothes as “transportive,” has worn them at premieres and film festivals, and in shows like “Genera+ion,” an HBO Max dramedy about high schoolers that aired for one season in 2021.
“It’s like I’m wearing a family crest,” Chase said about wearing Anna Sui. When she does so on red carpets, she added, “there’s no formal contract or anything. It’s more just me repping my aunt. And I prefer that. It doesn’t feel, you know, so commodified like that.”
In “Genera+ion,” Chase played an anxious, artsy teenager who loved vintage clothing. On set, she connected the show’s costume designer, Shirley Kurata, with Ms. Sui, and Ms. Kurata later incorporated some of Ms. Sui’s designs into the wardrobe for Chase’s character.
Ms. Kurata said that she wanted the show’s costumes to have a “sense of believability.” While brainstorming and developing wardrobes for its characters, she added, she noticed that young people were wearing vintage Anna Sui that they bought secondhand.
Isla Lynch, a buying director at the e-commerce website Ssense in London, has also noticed young people out and about in Anna Sui. Ssense customers tend to be younger than those who shop at legacy retailers, Ms. Lynch said, and are often on the hunt for clothing that’s “fun and weird.” That sensibility comes through in Ms. Sui’s collections, she added.
“Whether it’s ready-to-wear and taking risks with prints or having, like, furry hats, all different elements of her merchandising are designed with such joy and kind of an element of silliness and fun,” Ms. Lynch said.
A sense of levity, Ms. Sui said, has always been something that she has valued as a designer. So has affordability: She has focused on making clothes priced somewhere between luxury and mass brands. (Dresses sold by Anna Sui, for example, can start at more than $800; on sale, their prices can drop to about $200.) This positioning has made the label one that can be both aspirational and accessible.
“I’m not buying couture-price fabric, and I’m not buying pure cashmere,” Ms. Sui said. “I like fashion to be fun and affordable, and it’s always been that. It can’t be too much fun if it’s too expensive.”
The designer Zac Posen, before becoming a peer of Ms. Sui’s in the New York fashion industry, got a taste of her sensibility from growing up near an Anna Sui store on Greene Street in the SoHo section of Manhattan (a location that closed in 2020). He called it “a portal into a universe and a world.”
Mr. Posen, 45, the chief creative officer at Old Navy, tapped Ms. Sui for her recent collaboration with the mall brand. The way Ms. Sui infuses her voracious appetite for culture — from music to museums to travel — into her collections, he said, has also helped her clothing resonate with new generations.
“Good design transcends, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be timeless,” Mr. Posen said. “She’s a survivor and an adapter.”
Yola Mzizi is a reporter for the Styles section and a member of the 2025-2026 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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