As a teenager, Anna Sui bought an old vanity at the Salvation Army in downtown Detroit. According to Hour Detroit's profile of the designer, it "looked like it had been in a fire, all smudged with smoke stains." Her mother was horrified. Sui painted it black.
That black lacquer became one of her signatures. She used the same trick in 1992 to furnish her first boutique on a tight budget, buying rococo-looking pieces at the flea market and painting them all black. She still owns the vanity.
This matters for anyone in Bloomfield Hills because The World of Anna Sui opened in Cranbrook Art Museum's Upper Galleries on October 21 and runs through February 28, 2027. The show started at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London, where Dennis Nothdruft curated it, and it has already stopped in London, New York, Fort Lauderdale, Charlotte, Shanghai, and Phoenix. At Cranbrook, a designer who learned her craft along Woodward is showing her work on Woodward, a short drive from the halls of West Bloomfield High School, where she staged her first fashion shows.
The Detroit Pieces London Never Hung
Chief Curator Laura Mott adapted the show for Cranbrook with Associate Curator of Collections Kat Goffnett and curatorial fellow Katy Kim. Their adaptation added two pieces, according to Cranbrook's announcement.
The first is a set of black-and-yellow employee uniforms Sui designed with Jack White for Third Man Records in 2012. This is the first time they have appeared in the exhibition. The second is the Anna Sui Arcadia Blossom Babydoll Minidress Olivia Rodrigo wore for her third studio album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love.
Those two pieces cover the two ends of Sui's career. The uniforms come from a long Detroit friendship. Hour Detroit reports that White presented Sui with the CFDA Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award at Lincoln Center in 2009. White and Third Man Records are also listed among the exhibition's supporters. The Rodrigo dress shows where the brand stands today. Her babydoll dress, first famous in the 1990s, is back on a pop album cover in 2026.
Mott explained the Detroit angle in the museum's release:
"Detroit is a music city, and that influence is visible throughout this exhibition. Genres of music play a critical role in Anna's artistic inspirations, from punk and grunge to mod and psychedelic rock."
The show includes more than 100 looks from Sui's archive, grouped under the 12 archetypes she keeps coming back to: Americana, Androgyny, Fairytale, Grunge, Mod, Hippie/Rockstar, Nomad, Punk, Retro, Schoolgirl, Surfer, and Victorian. Visitors walk through a series of "islands," each one a themed room. The design comes from a line Sui wrote in the exhibition catalog: "For a young girl it all starts in her bedroom."
A Map of Metro Detroit, Sewn Into the Archetypes
Read Hour Detroit's September profile before you go and the archetypes start to point at real places. Many of them are a short drive from the museum, and some no longer exist.
- Hudson's downtown. Sui stood in line there to meet model Jean Shrimpton. She also spent hours with her mother in the store's fabric and notions departments, picking out silk flowers and buttons for dresses her mother sewed for her.
- Northland Center. She bought her first Betsey Johnson dress there.
- Saks at Somerset. She remembers it for high-end French designer fashion.
- Jacobson's. It is on her list of the stores she still names from memory.
- Kmart's fabric department. She made a new set of miniskirts there every weekend, then wore them through the school week.
- The Olympia and Rouge Park. She saw Led Zeppelin at the Olympia, and Iggy Pop and MC5 in Rouge Park, tagging along with her older brother because he had a driver's license.
The Mod and Punk rooms are where Mott's quote about Detroit music is easiest to see. The Mod look came out of those concerts and that shopping. Sui told Hour Detroit, "I grew up in the golden era of Detroit. It was very rich, very, very cultured, and had incredible stores."
Then Walk Downstairs to the Saarinens
Sui's influences also include the campus the show is on, which is why the Cranbrook stop fits so well.
She credits Detroit's design heritage as directly as its record stores. "We had all those great designers coming out of Detroit, like Alexander Girard and the Eameses," she told Hour Detroit. "The Saarinens influenced a whole generation of designers."
There is a family tie too. Her father, Paul Sui, spent his career as a structural engineer at Smith, Hinchman and Grylls, now SmithGroup, with an office in the Penobscot Building. At a GM event in the 1990s, he told her that one of his first jobs had been working with Eero Saarinen on the GM Technical Center in Warren in the early 1950s, before she was born.
So the Lower Galleries are worth a stop on the same visit. Designing Cranbrook: The Saarinens' Eclectic Vision is on view there as an ongoing exhibition. Two more ongoing shows, Labyrinth/Laboratory: Selections from the Cranbrook Collection and Shaping the Field: Ceramics at Cranbrook Academy of Art, round out a full afternoon. That puts Sui's work and the Saarinen design history she credits in the same building, one floor apart.
The Free Thursday Math
General admission is $12. Seniors 65 and over and Detroit residents pay $10, and students with ID pay $8. ArtMembers and children 12 and under get in free. People with EBT/Michigan Bridge or WIC cards and their guests also get in free through Museums for All.
Thursday is the best day to go. Admission is free for individuals and family groups, and the galleries stay open until 8 p.m. On every other open day they close at 5. Groups larger than 10 can't be accommodated on Thursdays.
From Thursday, October 29, through the closing date, the calendar has 18 Thursdays. Three of them fall on holiday closures listed on the museum's visit page: Thanksgiving on November 26, Christmas Eve on December 24, and New Year's Eve on December 31. That leaves 15 free Thursday evenings. Two of the three closures fall during the holidays, when out-of-town guests are most likely to ask what there is to do.
The FIKA Café runs on its own fall schedule. It opens at 9 a.m. most weekdays and stays open until 8 p.m. on Thursdays, so dinner and an evening visit work on the same night. Visitor parking is free behind the museum and along the turning-circle drive, with more spaces in the Institute of Science ramp. The address is 39221 Woodward Avenue.
The museum is closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Wednesdays and Fridays through Sundays run 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The Weekend of November 7
The busiest stretch of the fall falls on one weekend, and it works for both kids and adults.
Fall Family Day runs Saturday, November 7, starting at 11 a.m., with an Anna Sui theme. Activities include hands-on fashion design with repurposed textiles and styling miniature mannequins, for ages five and up. Everything is included with admission. Since kids 12 and under get in free, a family with young children pays only for the adults.
Adults can come the day before. A guided exhibition tour starts Friday, November 6, at 11:30 a.m. Tours cost $22 including admission, or $5 for ArtMembers. On campus, Cranbrook House has tours on November 7 and 8, from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. With Family Day on Saturday, that makes three Cranbrook events in three days.
The Rest of the Run, in Order
Exhibition tours are on Fridays at 11:30 a.m. Workshops pick up in December and January.
- Nov. 6: Exhibition tour
- Nov. 7: Fall Family Day
- Nov. 20: Exhibition tour
- Dec. 3: Adult artmaking workshop, "Anna Sui Accessories"
- Dec. 4: Exhibition tour
- Dec. 5: A second "Anna Sui Accessories" adult workshop, plus the family workshop "Anna Sui Fairytale Design"
- Dec. 18: Exhibition tour
- Jan. 14: ArtLab Afterschool, "Wild Fashion Accessories," inspired by Sui
- Jan. 15: Exhibition tour
- Jan. 23: Family textile-art workshop based on Sui's collections and upcycling
- Feb. 5 and Feb. 19: Final exhibition tours before the Feb. 28 close
Hour Detroit also reports that Sui will host a pop-up at the Third Man Records store in the Cass Corridor while the exhibition is open. No date has been announced, so check with the store before making the trip.
If the August sky events were your last reason to visit Cranbrook, our Bloomfield Hills August calendar covered that side of campus. This winter, the Upper Galleries are the main draw.
At Moving MI, we make video about the places that give Bloomfield Hills its character, and a designer coming home to Cranbrook is one of them. If you're thinking about selling a home near Woodward and want marketing that shows buyers what it's like to live a few minutes from this museum, start with a Free Home Valuation & Customized Marketing Plan.
