"Live your dream!" is a philosophy that permeates Anna Sui’s life. Whether she’s signing autographs, designing or thinking about what is important in the world, "I am convinced, she muses, if you can think it . . . if you can imagine it . . . you can make your dreams come true!"

Anna Sui lives in an optimistic, borderless sphere. "I’m well known, she explains, for mixing metaphors in my fashions: nostalgia / trendiness, good girl / bad girl personas. I love contrasts and I’ve played on these themes in my cosmetics and certainly my first fragrance. In my new fragrance, Sui Dreams, I wanted to express optimism and the fulfillment of my philosophy of life."

"In fact," she continues, "my fashion designs, and especially my second fragrance, have each been conceived to take a woman to a new place, which I believe is fanciful, fun and cutting-edge."

"Whatever I design is more of a spirit than an age group. For instance, my mom wears my clothes and some of my friends’ kids who are teenagers, wear my clothes, too. So I think it is a matter of what strikes a chord with the person. Maybe she thinks, ‘Oh, my mother had something like this, or it reminds me of something I remember wanting.’ I try to respond to that nostalgic longing through my designs."

"On the other hand, my customers love the latest trends. They want to be the first. I always try to catch the wave. I love when somebody says to me ‘I have this dress which I bought eight years ago and it’s my favorite to wear to a party. My husband thinks I look sexy in it.’ People want the latest thing, yet love classics that last forever. It is the contradiction of fashion which inspires me. I always take them into consideration when I’m designing."

"Even as a kid growing up in Detroit, I collected perfume ads and perfume bottles. I even created a little file on the subject. And, every Christmas I would go into the holiday gift shop at J.L. Hudson to buy my mother a fragrance present. She always wore Chanel No 5, but I remember choosing bottles in the shapes of cats and flowers. Each came in cellophane-like packages. It was the fun packaging that captured my imagination."

"As a young woman, I never really wore that many different fragrances. Usually, if there was something I liked, I enjoyed it for years and years. I may not have been much of a fragrance connoisseur at that point in my life. But, I found that each of the fragrances I liked had particular characteristics and, I must admit, they have influenced my decisions in choosing the types of fragrances I wanted to create for my customers. My favorite smells start with very sweet floral notes. Fruit adds a tanginess and always at the bottom, incense-like, woody, powdery notes."

"Emotionally, each fragrance creates a mood and most importantly I believe gives other people a sense of your aura. The fragrance experience is a kind of dreaming. It’s not tangible, it’s just there."

Anna admits to having a fascination with the perfumers. "It is always surprising," she explains, "how many things there are to consider. In the beginning of the process, all you think about is what you like. When you become familiar with all the different ingredients you realize what an important role each can play in the creation of a brilliant memorable fragrance."

"It’s wonderfully interesting to work with perfumers," she recalls. "They really study you. They came to my office, they went to my store, they looked at the furniture, the colors and fabrics. Since I tend to surround myself with things that I love, they got very good clues as to what I was all about. Then they went to my new apartment, which is an evolution of what I did with the purple and black in my store and my office. They saw what I was about. They got it!"

"I was thrilled because from my point of view when I first began to consider entering the world of fragrances, too many perfumes and cosmetics, were overly generic looking, pared down, minimal, and very, very practical and utilitarian. The perfumers responded to my concerns by giving me a wonderful fragrance with a sense of humor."

As for her charming Sui Dreams handbag bottle, Anna explained, "my friends always tease me because they never see me without a pocketbook. It’s kind of like my signature. The colors for my new fragrance are based on one of my favorite color palettes . . . turquoise, teal and silver. They are colors I live with in my home, my fashion designs and now my fragrance packaging. And, what I love about the purple is that when you walk into a store you can be half way across the room and you can still see it. The flower design is reminiscent of art nouveau, which is one of my favorite styles. There’s nothing generic about it but there is a sense of fun."

The contradictions of Anna Sui’s edgy, unorthodox fashions and innovative, individualistic lifestyle give her fragrances an irresistible appeal. She is full of surreal tantalizing surprises which reminds us of the painter, Chagall, whose colorful figures float with loving abandon high above the everyday world to lift our spirits and encourage us to dream.