"Like, how did I, from the suburbs of Detroit, end up in New York, and with my own company, and designing fashion shows?" Anna Sui asked in an interview with The Detroit News on the week The World of Anna Sui opened at Cranbrook Art Museum. She answered the question herself: "It was… a lot of hard work and determination, but it was also all those things that growing up influenced me."
On Woodward Avenue, the rest of that answer is on the walls. The exhibition has been touring since 2017, with stops in London, New York, Fort Lauderdale, Charlotte, Shanghai and Phoenix. The Bloomfield Hills presentation is the first in her home state, and according to The Detroit News, it is the only one that shows how growing up here shaped her work. Sui was born in Detroit and raised in Dearborn Heights and West Bloomfield Township. The local material is the part most worth your time, and on Thursdays, when admission is free, it can be seen in more than one sitting.
The touring core, and what Cranbrook built around it
The traveling exhibition has more than 100 looks from Sui's archive. They are grouped into twelve archetypes that run through her career: Americana, Androgyny, Fairytale, Grunge, Mod, Hippie/Rockstar, Nomad, Punk, Retro, Schoolgirl, Surfer and Victorian. Clothing shares the galleries with the shoes and accessories that went down the runway with it, design work from her cosmetics partnerships, mood boards and video.
According to The Detroit News and the museum, the Cranbrook presentation adds four things:
- Grande Ballroom handbills and posters. Sui was too young to attend shows at Detroit's former Grande Ballroom, but an older friend brought her the handbills, and they grew into a poster collection that includes designs by Gary Grimshaw. She told The Detroit News that the posters shaped her backdrops, her invitation wall, her color choices and her fonts.
- A section co-curated with Sui from Cranbrook's own collection. It brings together pieces that fed into her designs: Detroit's Pewabic Pottery, works by Andy Warhol, and fabrics by William Morris and Alexander Girard.
- A photo room of the places she went as a child. It includes Hudson's flagship department store downtown and Detroit's former Chinatown, where she ate and shopped with her parents.
- Two pieces shown for the first time. One is the black-and-yellow Third Man Records employee uniform Sui designed with Jack White in 2012. The other 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.
Kat Goffnett, Cranbrook's associate curator of collections, adapted the show with Laura Mott and Katy Kim. She told The Detroit News that the aim was to show "what were some interesting points of her life that she wanted to talk about, specifically in the world of Detroit." She also said it is the first fashion-focused exhibition she knows of in the museum's recent past.
"Detroit is a music city, and that influence is visible throughout this exhibition."
Laura Mott, Cranbrook's chief curator, said that in the museum's exhibition announcement, and it is the best way into the galleries. Start with the Grande Ballroom posters, and the punk, grunge, mod and psychedelic rooms read as the result of things Sui collected a few miles from where the show now hangs.
Why a free Thursday suits this show
Cranbrook Art Museum stays open until 8 p.m. on Thursdays, three hours later than any other day, and Thursday admission is free for individuals and family groups. Hour Detroit's weekend guide lists the same terms for The World of Anna Sui: museum admission of $12, free on Thursdays. Groups larger than 10 cannot be accommodated on Thursdays.
A free visit still needs a ticket. Cranbrook's ticket site says general admission tickets are required, can be bought ahead or at the door, and that free admission is verified on arrival. Get a general admission ticket before you go, even on a free Thursday. On other days, admission is $12 general, $10 for seniors 65 and older and for Detroit residents, $8 for students with ID, and free for ArtMembers and children 12 and under.
With a hundred looks and twelve archetypes, this show rewards several visits. If admission is free, one evening can go to the Detroit material and another to the runway rooms. The run ends February 28, 2027, but three Thursdays this season fall on holiday closures.
| Month | Thursdays open, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. | Thursdays closed |
|---|---|---|
| November | Nov. 5, 12, 19 | Nov. 26, Thanksgiving |
| December | Dec. 3, 10, 17 | Dec. 24 and Dec. 31 |
| January 2027 | Jan. 7, 14, 21, 28 | None |
| February 2027 | Feb. 4, 11, 18, 25 | None |
Counting today, Thursday, Nov. 5, that leaves fourteen free Thursday evenings before the show closes. December is the tightest month. FIKA, the museum's café, keeps fall hours that match the late night, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursdays, so the café is still open when a weeknight visit ends.
The paid programs that go deeper
Free Thursdays get you into the galleries. The ticketed programs go further, and several of them fall in the next few weeks.
- Exhibition tours on Fridays: Nov. 6 and 20, Dec. 4 and 18, Jan. 15, and Feb. 5 and 19. The Nov. 6 tour runs 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and costs $22 with museum admission included, or $5 for ArtMembers. Cranbrook's ticket site notes that space is limited and strongly encourages advance registration.
- Fall Family Day, Saturday, Nov. 7, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Activities include fashion design with repurposed textiles and styling miniature mannequins, all included with museum admission.
- Adult ArtMaking: Anna Sui Accessories, Thursday, Dec. 3, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., or Saturday, Dec. 5, 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. It costs $25 per participant, is for ages 16 and up, and requires advance registration.
- Family Workshop: Anna Sui Fairytale Design, Saturday, Dec. 5, 1:30 to 3 p.m. It costs $15 per participant, is meant for families with children ages 4 to 16, and requires preregistration.
- ArtLab Afterschool: Wild Fashion Accessories, Thursday, Jan. 14, 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. It costs $15 per student, grade 3 and up, with preregistration.
The Dec. 3 workshop falls on a free Thursday, so you can spend an hour in the accessories galleries before the 5:30 session. The museum store sells the exhibition catalog for $50, with pickup available at the museum. The catalog includes Sui's line "For a young girl it all starts in her bedroom," which the museum says informed the exhibition's design as a series of "islands."
Pair it with a house tour before the season ends
The museum is one stop on a 319-acre National Historic Landmark campus. Two of its best-known houses close for the year at the end of November. Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research says the last tours of Saarinen House, the Art Deco home on campus, and Frank Lloyd Wright's nearby Smith House take place the last weekend in November.
- Saarinen House tours run Thursday through Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $20 for adults, $10 for students and free for ArtMembers.
- Smith House tours run Thursday through Sunday at 1 p.m., plus Thursdays at 6 p.m. and Saturdays at 11 a.m. Tickets are $35 for adults and $20 for students.
Smith House's Thursday 6 p.m. tour lines up with the museum's late hours. A November Thursday could start in the Anna Sui galleries in the afternoon and end at Wright's "little gem," as he called it, after dark. Check the Center's calendar for the final weekend's slots before you plan around them. For the rest of the season's campus dates, our Bloomfield Hills fall calendar lays them out together.
If you grew up in West Bloomfield or shopped at Hudson's downtown, the photo room is a short drive down Woodward. For families who know Bloomfield Hills through Cranbrook's campus, this winter's show is a reason to go back on an ordinary Thursday.
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