Quarantine Crafts Inspired Anna Sui’s Optimistic SS´21 Collection

Anna Sui, who never cooked a day in her life, spent quarantine at home in New York teaching herself how to. “I shocked my mom whenever I’d call her: ‘How do you make this?’” To the designer, the lockdown period was a time of learning, from cooking to crafting and everything hand-spun. It inspired the spring/summer 2021 collection she presented in a video at New York Fashion Week. “I always start by putting stuff on my inspiration board. I thought, let’s take the gamble and start working on a little collection! As I was working on it, so many things were going on,” she says over the phone from her office. Gradually, a collection began to take form.

“When all the stores got boarded up, I was looking around to see if I could find graphics that I liked. I saw these adorable drawings that Stevie Shao had done in Seattle. I got in touch with her, and we ended up using the graphics for some of the T-shirts and sweatshirts.” Walking down the street in New York, Sui saw a lady carrying a crochet bag. “I said, what an adorable bag! She said, ‘I just learned how to crochet!’ It proved my theory that people are learning how to do hobbies and crafts.” Remembering the beer can hats people used to crochet as a hobby, Sui felt compelled to follow the sign.

“I ordered this great crochet beer can hat and when I got it, my invoice said, ‘We make beer can hats’. I thought, who makes beer can hats? So, I called this woman, and that’s what she does. All my nieces and nephews love Spindrift, and we always have these cans left over. I love the colours, so I thought, maybe I can make really pretty beer can hats.” And so, the collection’s key piece was born. “Crochet is such a thing right now, people are taking up these hobbies to use up their time at home,” Sui adds. “Little by little, all these things influenced the textile designs and the print sensibility. I wanted the clothing to be comfortable: something you could feel good in and wear for a Zoom meeting, because you want to make yourself feel good.” Now, Sui is employing her optimism to look forward to a new era in fashion.

“I’m the ultimate optimist. Show me a piece of fabric that I fall in love with and I’ll see a collection! People need to be inspired right now. We’re bombarded with the economics and the violence. We need a bit of an escape,” she says. “Out of adversary always comes a big surge of creativity. After World War One, suddenly there was the Roaring Twenties and flappers and Art Deco. I can’t wait to see what this is going to generate. Young people are growing up in a very different way than we did. They’re going to have a different influence, but what comes out of that will be amazing.”