Anna Sui said she was thinking about “how to be a dandy in the age of mass culture” for fall 2006, a collection that never disappoints in terms of being upbeat, exuberant, playful, and visual. Anna always works within her arsenal of signatures and trademarks, and her shows always look like ‘Anna’ (you can tell who it is even without knowing whose collection you are seeing).

This time, the highly visual, colorful 60’s inspired collection (which was a little of this and a little of that), could have easily been dubbed, ‘My Favorite Things’ with its emphasis on short dresses and skirts (many trapeze shaped or boasting full skirts); tall boots (often decorated or embroidered); military inspired ‘Sergeant Pepper’ jackets; well tailored blazers and narrow pantsuits; sweet, ruffled, and feminine blouses; prim and proper white collars and cuffs; pattern mixing; and shine (achieved through the use of lame, metallic- shot fabrics, and pile- ons of gold jewelry). She inventively paired traditional menswear fabrics like herringbone and tweed with chiffons, florals and sequins, showed both real (courtesy of Adrienne Landau) and faux furs and fur trims, used patterned tights to add to the eclectic mix, and accessorized with newsboy caps to give it more ‘attitude’. And when Anna does show black, you can bet it won’t be dull, basic black, but highly ornamental un-basic black, as exempflied by Naomi’s finale- the three dimensional glittery black all over mesh flowers baby doll dress.

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