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Anna Sui

American fashion designer (born 1964)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ262789
Source-derived summary

Anna Sui (Chinese: 蕭志美; pinyin: Xiāo Zhìměi; born August 4, 1955) is an American fashion designer. Her brand categories include several fashion lines, footwear, cosmetics, fragrances, eyewear, jewelry, accessories and home goods.

Sui was named one of the "Top 5 Fashion Icons of the Decade" for 2000–2010, and in 2009 earned the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), joining the ranks of Yves Saint Laurent, Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren, and Diane von Furstenberg.

Early life and family origins

Sui is a second-generation Chinese-American born in Detroit, Michigan. Her father, Paul Sui (Chinese: 蕭惠光; pinyin: Xiāo Huìguāng) and mother, Grace Sui Fang (方光琪; Fāng Guāngqí) met while studying at the Sorbonne in Paris where Sui's father was studying engineering and her mother, painting. Her paternal grandparents were Xiao Yulan (蕭毓蘭; Xiāo Yùlán), a Tahitian-Chinese businessman, and his wife Qiu Daidi (丘帶娣; Qiū Dàidì). Her maternal grandparents were Fang Chih, a Chinese diplomat and his Japanese wife named Fang I-chih (born Masue Ueki).

Sui is a matrilineal descendant of the prominent Fang clan of Tongcheng, Anhui, notable for its many scholars and philosophers. She is an 18th generation descendant of Fang Bao, an influential Chinese poet who founded the Tongcheng School of literary prose popular throughout the Qing Empire. Notable ancestors also include Fang Gongcheng, tutor of the imperial palace, and Fang Guancheng, Viceroy of Zhili seated at Tianjin from 1749 to 1768 amongst other Qing era scholars.

Editorial summary

“Anna Sui” enters the record as american fashion designer (born 1964). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Anna, American and fashion can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1955, 2000, 2010, 2009—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1964-08-04. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Anna, American and fashion.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Anna Sui” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Anna, American and fashion provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q262789. VIAF identifies the subject as 86242057. The Library of Congress control number is n2009021303. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1955, 2000, 2010 and 2009.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Anna Sui”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Anna Sui primary sources, Anna Sui archive and Anna research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Anna Sui”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Anna Sui” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.