Enter The Wonderful World Of Anna Sui

London is a hotbed of fashion exhibitions right now and The World Of Anna Sui, which opens this week at the Fashion and Textile Museum, is up there with the best. A cleverly staged retrospective of Anna Sui's fashion legacy to date, it's an experience that is as immersive as it's comprehensive - not to mention nostalgic for the designer herself.

"It has been emotional," New York-based Sui told us yesterday as she walked us around the exhibition ahead of its opening tomorrow. "It’s the first time I’ve really looked at these clothes again and seen the whole outfits all together."

Split into "Anna's Archetypes", themes include Fairytale, Nomad, Victorian, Mod, Punk, Grunge, Androgyny, Americana, Surfer and Schoolgirl, all recurring reference points in Sui's nearly 30-year fashion career. Curator Dennis Northdruft has placed examples of each "tribe", as Sui describes them, on rising podiums, in a room that mirrors the aesthetic of Sui's first Big Apple boutique ("the red floor, the purple walls, the black lacquered furniture," Sui recalled) and which is entered through an elaborate wardrobe door.

"The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is my favourite fairytale and I loved the idea to emerge through this wardrobe into my world," smiled Sui.

But as well as celebrating the work Sui has created, it harks to the inspiration points that have got her to the top of the fashion pile. Starting off with what she calls the "inspiration room" visitors are presented with work from "all the British designers that I was inspired by – my idols - Zandra Rhodes, Biba, Ossie Clarke, the Kings Road boutique Granny Takes A Trip, Scottish fashion designer Bill Gibb and memorabilia from before fashion shows is all in here," explained Sui, who made sure one of her earliest stimulation points were included here.

"This is the article that appeared in Life Magazine that got me thinking about going to Parson's," she revealed. "It was about two young ladies that went to Parson’s School of Design, went on to graduate, and then Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton opened a boutique for them, so as a kid I thought, ‘That’s all I have to do, go to Parson’s!' As an adult, I went back and re-read the article, and one of the young ladies’ father was Irvine Penn, so you don’t get that as a kid. When I met Irvine Penn later in my career, I got to tell him that story, and he thought it was so funny."

Also celebrated in the exhibit are the collaborations Sui has become so well-known for. "That’s the unique thing in my career - I’ve ended up working with a lot of the same people," she said. "Pat McGrath and François Nars for make-up, Garren for hair, Erickson Beamon for jewellery, James Covello for knitwear and hats and, of course, my close friend Steven Meisel." As a result, the best examples of Sui's unions have been selected for display, showing the power of creatives joining forces.

Another major thread of this exhibition is music. Like an intangible muse, it has been a constant source of motivation for Sui and features heavily through rock posters; an echoing soundtrack of late Eighties and early Nineties hits, including The Stone Roses track I Wanna Be Adored; homages to cultural pin-ups including Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithful; and a screening of the 1997 MTV show Fashionably Loud, where Sui showed her collections alongside Marc Jacobs, Todd Oldham and rock band Elastica.

As the why London has been graced with the retrospective, it's a case of "don't ask, don't get". "It was a coincidence that I was asked to do it here, because I was visiting the Thea Porter exhibition," explained Sui. "I was in the gift shop and Celia Joicey [head of the museum] walked in and we ended up having coffee. By the end of the conversation she asked me if I wanted to have an exhibition. She was the first to ask!"