Getting the fashion industry excited about an event is no plum task. And yet season after season, Anna Sui does it with her thoughtful and fun runway shows. Blame it on her ability to transport her audiences deep into her world full of references that range from Pre-Raphaelites to Diaghilev to disco. (Of course, the retro soundtracks and top models don’t hurt, either.)

Lately, Sui’s been sharing her passion for fashion history with a wider audience by taking on many collabs, the latest of which is with O’Neill, in stores now. Just in time for summer, the designer crafted a selection of swimwear and cover-ups that echo the bohemian mood of her main collection but also target a new kind of customer. We caught up with Sui at her Soho store to reflect on her career, her favorite muses, and texting with Anita Pallenberg.

You’ve been doing more collaborations in general lately—why is it important to you to diversify into these arenas?

Well, there are certain limitations that we have as far as production for what we’re able to do. A great way to overcome that is to work with somebody who has the expertise in that product. So working with Frye, they make the coolest, sturdiest boot that you can imagine, and so I think this is my third time collaborating with them. They’re just dreams to work with. It takes you to another place. And also you learn so much, because we’re so limited as far as resources now that it opens up new avenues. I did the same with the Coach bags and with the luggage with Tumi and now this collection with O’Neill.

How did you get involved with O’Neill?

Our sales manager knew somebody at O’Neill, and she started thinking that it would be such a great pair-up between O’Neill and Anna Sui because O’Neill is very much our girl. They’re very print-oriented and known for their surfer style, but we wanted to incorporate our bohemian style with it. I think that we’ve blended it so well. The clothes are just so dreamy; we were all just oohing and ahhing over these lace pieces.

That perfect white lace dress is a very necessary summer item.

It’s so true. I remember one summer I was looking at Naomi [Campbell] pictures on a yacht on Daily Mail or something, and every day she had the most beautiful, little white baby-doll dress. I thought, Where did she find all those?! But she can just zero in on something, too. That’s always been my dream, to have all those gorgeous white baby-doll dresses.

You have the best references season after season—who was the beachy surfer girl that you looked to for this collab?

We wanted to capture that true bohemian feeling of the ladies of Laurel Canyon: Joni Mitchell, Michelle Phillips, all those girls you put pictures on the wall and are like, “I hope I grow up and look like this.” So what we tried to capture was that dream.

I think fashion in general is really swinging toward the Anna Sui vibe, very bohemian.

It’s exciting. It’s kind of like a new beginning again. We’ve had so much reaction from all the stores and press—it’s like when I first started. It’s got that same feeling. It’s wonderful.

How do you define who your customer is and continue to change and grow with her over the years?

I think that somewhere I never grew up, and it’s still that same dream as when I was looking at the pictures of Michelle Phillips. It’s still always that same thing, and no matter where I go with the collection, Vikings or Pre-Raphaelites, there’s still that bohemian girl there. That was always my ideal. As much as I try to veer away from it, there are always a couple of those Michelle Phillips and Joni Mitchells in the collection. Through every collection you can find them.

So what’s the secret to staying young forever then?

I think loving what you do. You can’t ask for more. This is what I wanted to do since I was 4 years old, and just the fact that I’m able to do it and do it globally—I work in Japan and I work in Europe and I work in New York—it’s kind of a dream. It’s a lot of hard work and I’m very, very dedicated to it. I do a lot of sacrificing of other things, but it’s what I’ve always wanted.

As someone who’s been in the business for so long, how do you stay inspired and not get worn out or jaded?

One of the things that I love the most is research—learning new things and exploring new things. That’s what I do when I work on a collection: I find something that sparks my interest and then I’m obsessed with and I just go into it. It’s like going into the rabbit hole. Then all of a sudden you find out all these other things because one thing leads to another. Like when I did the Ballets Russes collection [Fall 2011], I saw that beautiful Diaghilev exhibit at the V&A; and I thought, OK, now I can be inspired by those Léon Bakst drawings. I remember one of the Ormsby Gore sisters was telling me that the way they started wearing vintage was because of a sale of the Ballets Russes costumes in, like, 1968. They couldn’t afford the principal costumes, but they could afford the costumes of the Sugar Plum Fairies, all these crushed velvets. So they started wearing them on the street, and all of a sudden the Beatles and the Stones and everybody else started following what they were doing. Well, don’t you know, in the Diaghilev exhibit, there was a film of that auction. I was just like, “Oh, my God.” That’s what sparked that whole thing where everyone was looking romantic and medieval. I love finding that connection. That makes my day—that makes my season when I find that out.

Do you feel like it’s harder or easier today to communicate that to your customer? I feel like with the pressures to make Instagrammable moments, it’s become very hard to get people excited about the history of fashion.

There are so many levels in what I do. Somebody like Tim [Blanks] will get the really intricate things, but then the obvious things will be the things that people talk about the most. I always try to bring it all back, make it current, and tie it in to something that’s happening in our pop culture, like the Viking thing. It’s really true—I was watching [the History channel TV series] and I got that idea. It wasn’t an intellectual idea, but that’s really how it happened. I think that you have to put it on different levels.

Is there one specific era or muse you feel like is the most Anna Sui?

My biggest idols are Anita Pallenberg and Keith Richards. So at the end of the day, it’s always like: Is there something that Anita would wear? Is there something that Keith would wear? Is it cool enough for them? And then I usually send Anita an image and say, “This is the outfit that I did for you.”Read more here:marieaustralia.com | www.marieaustralia.com/evening-dresses

Candy
Bubblegum girl, I think you deserve better.
You're dating a man who acts like a child,
Leaving a breadcrumb trail of missed calls until you're crying down the phone at work
Leaking candy floss tears into the carpet.
Far be it from me to impart my wisdom,
There's only a few months between us
But I've stopped pearlescent pear drops
Forming on my cheeks
Because no man is ever worth it, sugar.

Vegan
He told you drink no milk and eat no eggs
Till your blood thinned out and your body starved
Girl, you should know
A man who tries to purify your body
Is aiming to conquer holy ground
Raining redemption on the promised land
This is not the Crusades
And he has no right to a single centimetre of you
Your body is a temple of ***, drugs and rock n roll
It's a sin to cleanse it with kale.

Sky
You had a friend who painted you the colour of sunsets
Bleeding, beautiful, bright
Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?
Did it hurt when he shot you down?
Was your daddy a thief because I swear he stole stars to put in your eyes
And now that man wants them out
Stardust in his pocket
Leaving you dark and blind
How do you tame the sky?
By convincing you you're a wolf in sheeps clothing
Dressed himself up as the victim, the lamb to the lion
Ironed out the creases in his smile until he's a cloudless day
And you're the monster in the depths.

Scorpio
Five foot *******
In love with the sound of his own voice
With a flex of his pecs
He tells you he just doesn't think you 'werk'
You just don't seem to 'vibe' and with that jibe
Strips the maturity from the situation until it's exposed enough to be instagrammable.
You know what he's really like
Round family a sweetheart, an old fashioned charmer
Darling he's built himself a brand new armour
A carapace
And you may well get crabby sometimes
But he's the one with the sting.

Anxiety
He’s sweet
Really
A pure soul with no ulterior goals in mind
He likes you.
And guys too,
Which surprises you a little.
Maybe it’s his unassuming posture
The way he holds his head
And the five o’clock shadow that creeps through till it’s gone midnight
And he hasn’t messaged yet.
He likes you
Really
But doesn’t have control over his tongue
As it writhes inside the stranglehold the brain has put it under.
He came to these studios to find a voice
And found yours, lilting, Celtic with a northern twang
Like the snapped string of a guitar.
You talk to him about...everything
And he tries to muster the words to keep up with your shine
Finds solace in your bed but not your lips.
He ends it over text
With bitten nails stabbing the keys
To lock your heart anew.

New Rules
Something about the hesitation in your smile says
That you are used to living on a knife edge
A bridge edge
A cliff edge
Anywhere he could push-pull you off
Throw himself into churning depths so you'll come back to catch him
But you're the ******, naturally
Throw around the C-U-N
Tea-sipping, words slipping from your mouth as we realise
A shared history, of a sort.
We've both felt the iron tang of blood
As we bit our tongues against injustices railed against us
Words and names buried so deep
They cannot be plucked out like the splintered praise of friends.
You say You'd take him back in a heartbeat,
But all you're missing is an echo chamber
A sounding board for your own atrioventricular system
Hidden behind your lungs
Is all the love that you could give.
Share it with the world.
Share it with yourself.
And don't pick up the phone.

i bathe in milk
an alkaline to bleach
the acidic stench of stress
out of my poor pores

i lie in a rose garden
the hummingbird flying over me
to cleanse the noise
of the distant city

sitting pretty
with cucumbers over my eyelids
while a lady caresses my nailbeds
with a file

it seems menial;
that this is supposed to make me
feel better on the outside
when inside i’m in denial

self care is not just
an instagrammable bath bomb
exploding in the consumer’s face
like the feeling exploding in the feeler

it’s realer.
i washed today,
brushed my teeth today
got dressed today

i’m impressed today.
today i am a phenomenal woman.
today i am a higher being;
i am maya

sitting in her mansion
sipping on her sweet tea
smiling sweetly;
reminiscing on her millions.

more bronzed

rectangular packets
of muscle
almost visible

underneath
another white tight shirt

the stench of deodorant
or aftershave
or cologne

or a cocktail of three

enough to send
a throng of blondes
in my direction

eyes like sapphire halos
cheeks that shimmer

phones infested
by a palette of pictures

all samey
all shots of a head
tilted this way
that way
back again

and if only
a little more funny

pouring jokes
in with your drink

giggles reverberating off
from the gaudy lights

looking so Instagrammable

we’d have fan accounts
by Monday
our own personal emoji

ITV wanting us for a series
and a blue tick on Twitter

you see it too
you must

and if you say

look babe
we look good together

I’d smile and say

yeah babe don’t we just

we're all the ******* same.
we wear hoops in our ears to seem gangsta,
wear black to show we don't care,
we're all existentialists fond of nietsche
we write poems and laud self expression as a new god,
the god of the self.
we listen to the most minimal techno
while smoking cigarettes that will **** us
and we don't maintain eye contact too long
or we'll fall in love
because we're so not used to raw human contact.
we **** on drugs
god forbid we let someone see
our real selves, stripped down,
not hiding behind a haze of being high.
we yearn for a greater meaning,
and strut around like roosters pretending
we care about politics
but the world is collapsing on itself
and all we can do is write facebook posts,
millions of the same laments.
we don't actually care,
except as a way to boost our own egos for being informed.
we care about living in the moment,
paying exorbitant amounts of money to
rave in a desert with thousands of other people
also living in the moment.
we don't want ugly friends,
beautiful friends are so much more instagrammable.
we all care about having perfect sunglasses,
perfect shoes,
perfect hair,
more than having a perfect world,
perfect understanding,
perfectly imperfect, fought for love.
no wonder we keep smoking to
shorten our hedonistic lives.
our minds are decaying while
our bodies are getting primed up,
glossified, matted, blurred,
made more perfect every day.
nazis have an undercut? well,
every boy in america has one too.
go punch a ****,
not because you think it's the right thing to do,
but because you want to be cool.
we're all just followers, all just tools.
and writing all this out makes me the biggest tool of all,
because it's nothing that hasn't already been written
a thousand times before.

It's all make-believe
Until it's not.

Each position is a step
For another spot,
Another title,
Another

You.

There is no place
But tomorrow.

The present
Has already passed.

I think of novels
That have stood up
Against the onslaught of time
And tried to learn
From their prose, only to
See past their spell
Of literary-ness.

Take me on a hike, I whisper
To myself.

Show me you're as afraid
Of the dust on the
Untouched pages
Of library books
As I am.

Tell me something
You won't tell
Your readers, for once.

Please don't post it
Neither.

It's just you and me here
Me and you
No beacon of great words or beacon

Lead on by dead hands
Of un-Instagrammable

Morality.

What happens when it happens,
I often wonder.

Will there be a sound?
Or solely silence?

Will, we look on our elders,
Our parental paradigms
As bottle caps
Or finely written pages
Within a ledger,
Like novelties, we forget
As soon as I remember

Our parking is about to expire?

Eternities echo
Mark my words
Will be

Short-lived.

But really,
What can you do
When
There is futility in a rainbow?