She raises a slim cigarette to her lips, barely inhaling, flirting with the illusion of it all. Aimlessly she gazes out the window, the people milling about below are small and indiscernible, fueled by need instead of desire. Pitying their reality, she counts no blessings, no, she was chosen. Augmenting her god complex with the smoke she makes dance and past lives of mink furs, she writes the poetry of each moment with tears that stain, dictating beauty as if were love. They say you can’t buy happiness but what do they know about freedom?

For Anna Sui’s Autumn/Winter 2025 collection, Sui immerses herself in the world of the madcap heiress; women who would come to inherit fortunes beyond belief, only to spend it on jewelry, art and men by their life’s end. Citing the likes of Barbara Hutton, Doris Duke or Peggy Guggenheim, amongst others, Sui was drawn to their penchants for the luxurious alongside their lack of inhibition. Their unfettered tastes and reckless abandon, allowed them to live lives that were purely driven by fabulosity, transcending the mundane to seemingly inhabit alternate realities altogether. In doing so, they defied expectations to be demure, to conserve, creating the pretense for a modern day fairy tale. Alongside the real madcap heiresses looked to, Sui also referenced films like Bringing Up Baby, My Man Godfrey, amongst others, hinting at the fact life does indeed imitate art. Sui recognizes society’s collective yearning and need for an escape, extrapolating that these desires reflect a greater need for self-expression and inspired prerogatives, jovially answering this call with a will to dream. 

Given Sui’s enduring reverence for and reference of all things fantasy, these madcap heiresses allowed her to weave together rich textures, fabrics, and faux furs into a collection with three distinct color stories: teals and greens, magentas and russet browns, and purples and black. Fabrics range from tweed-y plaids, heavy hammered satin, faux fur trims in Mongolian and leopard. Jewelry and accessories were also a focal point of reference given that heiresses like Hutton had a soft spot for jade and Guggenheim was known for her outlandish glasses. Sui worked with jewelry designer, Erickson Beamon to make the pieces look as real as possible, straddling glamour and irony alike as Sui’s madcap heiresses cheekily lollygag through their castles in the sky. For footwear, Sui worked with longtime collaborator John Fluevog to create custom sneakers featuring a rubber sole in three colorways, each reflecting the respective color palettes, along with a knee-high leopard print boot and buckle shoe, and a double strap Mary Jane.

Sui also worked with eyewear brand partner Mondottica on two, signature frames – that each come in four colorways – one featuring protruding rays stemming from a cat-eye silhouette a la Peggy Guggenheim and the other is cast in the shape of butterfly wings, its front features laminated and beveled details and strass decoration.

Wealth, in the world of Anna Sui, is ultimately subjective. 

Sui knows this herself given her enduring love for vintage, long-preceding fashion’s current obsession with it.