Milestone Mint Museum fashion exhibit brings ‘The World of Anna Sui’ to Charlotte
Get ready to rock, Charlotte. Well-known fashion designer Anna Sui’s work is heading to town, showcasing looks more that are more familiar on runways and at concerts than on museum walls.
And there’ll be a two-hour soundtrack to match.
Sui will be on hand Nov. 20 at Mint Museum Randolph to open ”The World of Anna Sui,” the Mint’s first exhibition dedicated to a female designer, and the first to showcase an Asian-American designer.
Sui has been known since the 1990s for runway shows with rock-and-roll and punk vibes, featuring supermodels Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista, and rock stars including Dave Navarro from The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane’s Addiction.
And she recently was featured in the New York Times Magazine as one of “The Greats” who “helped make and change the culture.
The Mint exhibit highlights more than 100 looks created by Sui that showcase various archetypes in her aesthetic, including rock star, Americana, fairy tale, grunge, retro and bohemian.
“I always wanted to take my audience and my customers on a fantasy journey,” Sui told The Charlotte Observer in a recent interview. “It takes you to other places, gives you glimpses to what the ‘90s were like, what the dress codes were back then. And I think there’s also a heavy historical emphasis on cultural inspiration.”
Inside ‘The World of Anna Sui’
Sui’s work has called upon New York’s vibrant art and music scene from the late 1970s onward, as well as London’s art and music.
The designs are within reach to high fashion fans lacking deep pocketbooks as well, with some pieces under $100. She once told “Vogue”: “You can’t have fun in a $3,000 jacket; it’s just too prissy.”
Sui is also known for her love of research and reflecting on things in a new way. “Anything new that I’m obsessing about, I can put that in my work,” she said.
Right now, that includes an obsession with Instagram.
“There’s kind of a whole fashion look that’s developed on Instagram that you can see on the streets now ... just kind of this consistency. The way street fashion used to happen, where you see birds of a feather ... now you see that on Instagram, and people are taking the influence off the Internet rather than off the streets.”
The exhibit will put a spotlight on Sui’s textile designs in particular.
Annie Carlano is the senior curator for craft, design and fashion at The Mint Museum. Carlano said Sui has a real sense of how pattern is best carried by certain textiles — “and then it’s not just about the dress because then there are the accessories — and there we get into her very collaborative nature.”
Sui has avoided merging with any corporate conglomerates, leaving herself room to work with a team that’s been with her since the beginning.
“She’s commercially successful, but she has remained true to herself and to the way she wants to work and to the way she wants to run her business. It’s a family affair. It’s really, refreshingly old fashioned,” Carlano said.
In fact, Sui has recently brought her nieces into her work, saying it’s been “inspiring to have them around and involved.” Isabelle Sui is her assistant, while Chase Sui Wonders has modeled the clothing and Jeannie Sui Wonders has worked on photography and video projects.
In the exhibit
At the Mint Museum Randolph, visitors will move through five rooms and a corridor that make for an intimate presentation of the designs. There’s so much to see that guests could come weekly, Carlano said.
Along with clothes and accessories, Carlano said visitors will also see posters, magazine clippings, inspiration boards and other memorabilia that inspired Sui’s designs. Everything is set to a two-hour soundtrack that includes music from The Cure, Nirvana and The Rolling Stones.
“When I’m working on a fashion show, one of my favorite things is to work on the music to get across the mood I’m trying to get at in my fashions,” Sui said. “All those things really play strongly throughout my collections.”
Sui doesn’t have a favorite piece in the exhibit to watch for. “That’s kinda like asking what’s your favorite child. It depends on the mood I was in when I did it and the mood I’m in now,” she said.
That mood includes street fashion you’d see in a New York nightclub in the body of the exhibition, along with signature touches like the Tiffany lamps found in her studio and shops.
In the last room of the exhibit, visitors will find an Anna Sui boutique of sorts, complete with fragrance, makeup and a few T-shirts and tops designed for the Mint.
The exhibition was first organized by the Fashion Textile Museum in London and curated by Dennis Nothdruft, who shaped the work into the archetypes. It has toured worldwide, including in New York and Shanghai, China. In Charlotte, the exhibit is presented by PNC Bank, with additional support from Deidre and Clay Grubb, the Mint Museum Auxiliary and others.
“It’s a little bit fantasy, it’s a little bit future. No one does what she does,” Carlano said. “And I think some of us might go to thrift stores and try to find things are hippy rock star grungy, but she doesn’t do that, so there’s a difference. She’s filtering everything though what I see as kind of a rock and roll, boho chic and a softness — dare I say sweetness — about it.”
‘The World of Anna Sui’
When: Nov. 20-May 1, 2022
Where: Mint Museum Randolph, 2730 Randolph Road
Cost: Admission is free on Nov. 20. Afterward, the Mint Museum exhibition is free for members and children age 4 and younger; $15 for adults; $10 for seniors age 65 and older; $10 for college students with ID; and $6 for youth age 5–17. Frontline workers and their immediate family receive complimentary admission through Dec. 31.
Artist talk: Sui will attend the public opening Nov. 20 and participate in a talk about her work from 2-3 pm. RSVP here
More details: mintmuseum.org/the-world-of-anna-sui/
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This story was originally published November 17, 2021 at 6:25 AM.
