Profile | Anna Sui, fashion designer, on being inspired by Madonna, 1980s New York and hanging out with Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista
- Anna Sui spent her Detroit childhood thinking about how to get to New York and be a fashion designer. She achieved that and made some famous friends
- When she met Madonna wearing one of her dresses it gave her the confidence to do her own show, then open her SoHo store so people could ‘understand’ her clothes
My parents are Chinese, but they met while they were going to university in Paris in 1948. My father was studying structural engineering at École nationale des Ponts et Chaussées and then went to the University of Michigan, in the United States. My mother studied painting at Beaux-Arts de Paris. I grew up outside Detroit; my mother and brothers, one older, one younger, still live there.
My mother’s family were from Anhui [in eastern China] but during the Chinese civil war and World War II, everyone was always on the move. My father’s family were from a village not far from Shenzhen [in southern China] and he also lived in Hong Kong as a young boy, but they lived in many provinces.
I would ask my mum and she would explain to me the superstitions because I didn’t understand any of that. We celebrated Christmas and Easter just like everyone else. My parents were very Westernised.
A bite of the Big Apple
I was a flower girl at my uncle’s wedding in New York and, when we went back to Detroit, I told my parents that when I grew up I wanted to move to New York and become a fashion designer. I was four or five, and in kindergarten.
