You Have to See Inside Anna Sui’s Stunning New York City Apartment
When the American fashion designer Anna Sui moved into her turn-of-the-century Greenwich Village building almost two decades ago, she found a close friend and, eventually, a second apartment. Her next-door neighbor was Murray Lerner, an Oscar-winning documentarian known for his films on Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, and Itzhak Perlman. The two bonded over their shared love of rock music, and Sui even used her neighbor’s wrought-iron balcony as an alternate entrance to her apartment whenever she forgot her keys. (“He was always up late,” she says.)
Sui always told her neighbor that she wanted his place if he ever left. Sure enough, when Lerner moved out a few years ago, she took over his space and embarked on a three-year renovation to create a home out of two distinct spaces. Connecting the two apartments was a challenge, since they are technically part of two different buildings that share a facade.
Sui’s solution was to insert two hidden doors on either side of the library that allow her to move from one apartment to the other. The inconvenience is outweighed by the benefits: Sui gained a dining room, a living room, a master bedroom, two bathrooms, and, perhaps most crucially, considerable closet space.
Building your dream home is an enterprise of patience and tenacity—both qualities Sui has possessed since she was little. Born and raised in Detroit, she is the daughter of two Chinese parents who met while studying in Paris.
When Sui was a young child, she attended a wedding in New York and returned to Michigan declaring, “I’m going to be a fashion designer.” In the 1970s, she moved to New York to attend the Parsons School of Design; she started her eponymous line in 1981 with a five-piece capsule collection of space-agey Lycra separates she sold to Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s.
From the start, Sui gained notice for her uncanny ability to mix disparate, obsessively researched references into harmonious splendor. It’s a talent that resonates not only in her clothing designs but also in the decor of her apartment addition, inspired by the chinoiserie apartment in Auntie Mame. For example, in her fall 2019 runway show (which she cheerfully dubbed “Poptimism”), Sui blended a Warholian palette with influences ranging from vintage psychedelic rock posters to Motown.
Similarly, in her new library, she combined Chinese cloisonné screens (refashioned as cabinet doors) with a 1930s églomisé desk and a lacquered love seat re-covered in yardage from a textile sample.
Passionate about craft, Sui painstakingly searched for skilled artisans to work on her home’s decoration. “Anna loves doing her homework—she is no-holds-barred,” says her friend Paul Cavaco, a creative director who also calls Sui “the loveliest human on the planet.”
The attention to detail and artisanship is apparent in her pearlescent fantasia of a dining room, where the custom Gracie wallpaper has been expertly hung by John Nalewaja and Jim Francis, paperhangers and restorers with decades of experience. Sui also commissioned Lisa DiClerico, a restoration conservationist with a background in fine art, to apply the apartment’s elaborate decorative painting and stenciling. “It’s important to me that there’s that human touch involved,” Sui says. “It’s a shame these skills are disappearing. That’s what I love about flea markets: You know somebody spent time to make the pieces you find there.”
In transforming Lerner’s place, Sui retained its cozy ambience and labyrinthine layout. Wandering through the rooms feels not unlike discovering a continent’s varied landscapes: Each space is distinct, but they are all still very much Anna Sui. The pink-and-purple color scheme of the living room was inspired by a London room created by David Hicks for the beauty mogul Helena Rubinstein.
The silver armoire is by James Mont, a Turkish-American midcentury designer whose layered finishes Sui loves. The colorful space also incorporates mirrored pillows from Sui’s trip to Rajasthan with her nieces, a Chinese Art Deco rug, and several still-life photos of flower arrangements by Steven Meisel, a former Parsons classmate who has remained a close friend. “She has created her own world, her own Narnia,” Meisel says of Sui’s home. “It’s the sickest apartment I’ve ever seen.”
Elsewhere in the apartment, a dressing area (formerly a second bedroom) is now anchored by a whimsical mural by Hilary Knight, the artist who illustrated the Eloise books. Sui commissioned the piece after meeting him at a Lincoln Center exhibition. “In the first rendering, there were two panthers and a naked man,” she recalls. “And I was like, ‘Ooh, I think that’s a little aggressive for me, Hilary.’ And he was like, ‘Maybe we should do a bird.’ I love the colors and the Art Nouveau feeling of it.”
The bedroom also has an avian theme, courtesy of a de Gournay wallpaper featuring peacocks—a fanciful backdrop to an eclectic array of furnishings that includes an Anglo-Indian bed and Victorian papier-mâché chairs. In the room adjacent, a walk-in closet (which used to be Lerner’s kitchen) has mirrored cabinetry inspired by the dressing room in the 1953 film The Earrings of Madame De....
“Her apartment is like a hidden gem. You just don’t know what room is coming up next,” says the supermodel Naomi Campbell, who has known Sui for 33 years and considers her “chosen family.” With each new space you enter, Campbell adds, “You feel like you’re walking into a different era—even when you’re going to the bathroom!”
Indeed, for the master bath, Sui chased down poppy-patterned tiles from a company in New Zealand; a shower curtain was fashioned out of black lace sample fabric left over from one of her collections. Both this bathroom and the second one that came with the Lerner apartment now also have windowpanes in marbleized glass that almost perfectly match those in her first apartment. Finding the glass was a treasure hunt for Sui’s patient contractor, Petrit Coma. The original windowpanes—from Bendheim, a family glass business since the 1920s—had become difficult to source.
The considerable attention and love Sui pours into her fashion creations will be on display this fall in the retrospective “The World of Anna Sui.” The exhibition, which debuted two years ago at London’s Fashion and Textile Museum, arrives in New York on September 12 at the Museum of Arts and Design, where it will be on view until February 23, 2020. The show highlights Sui’s distinctive mash-up of pop-culture references—from punk to grunge, Americana to Victorian. “Her talent is almost indescribable because it’s instinctive,” says another friend, the fashion designer Marc Jacobs. “I never question her choices. It just always works."
This story originally appeared in the September 2019 issue of ELLE Decor.
SUBSCRIBE
You Might Also Like
