The spring 2026 shows just ended, but on this episode of The Run-Through, it’s all about the 1990s, as Nicole Phelps welcomes Anna Sui and her niece, the actress Chase Sui Wonders, to discuss Sui’s new book The Nineties x Anna Sui. The designer talks about how she got interested in fashion, pouring over Seventeen Magazine in the Detroit suburbs, about moving to New York, and about launching her business almost accidentally after getting fired from her job.
“I came to New York in the ’70s to go to Parsons; [by] my second year I was working for some small companies and then gradually the companies became bigger,” she recalls. “I had these friends; they were making this great jewelry, like dice and skeletons and things, and selling [it] to all the punk rock fashion stores. And they said well, why don’t you make some clothes to go along with it? We’ll share a booth at the boutique show.” Sui’s clothes proved so popular she received orders from the city’s big department stores, which led to an ad in the New York Times. When the owner of the company where she worked saw it he demanded she stop production. “I got fired and that’s how I started my own business.”
For Sui Wonders, who has most recently been seen in the hit Apple TV+ show The Studio, her aunt was always a reminder that another way of life was possible. “Growing up in Detroit, my mom and dad were very focused on me getting into a good school, making money, and making a life for myself,” she explains. “My dad would be like, you gotta get a real job, you’re gonna study economics, and you’re gonna go into finance. And I was like, ‘Your sister is doing pretty well on this creative track, I think I should bet on myself.’ I would say she was hugely instrumental in that sense.”
