Sui unleashes the beast for fall/winter 2000

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July 18, 2000
Web posted at: 4:56 p.m. EDT (2056 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- To appreciate Anna Sui's fall/winter 2000 collection, you need to know a bit of art history -- namely about group of early 20th-century artists known as the Fauves.

These young painters took a liberated approach to art, using violent colors and bold, distorted forms. This drew derision from critics, who dubbed them Fauves (French for wild beasts) -- a moniker they willingly adopted. Henri Matisse is generally regarded as the leader of this expressionist movement.

It was their sense of freedom and desire to make radical changes that attracted Sui. She has translated their concepts into a collection filled with strong colors, patterns and geometric shapes.

"You see a lot of uneven hemlines, a lot of biased cut, and a lot of pleating with uneven bottoms on the pleats," Sui says.

Her suits are cut to follow the body. She leaves most of them unlined.

"The jackets that I did were very unconstructed," Sui says, "and again, had this kind of uneven hemline. They're almost like blouse jackets.

"The only pants that I am using this season are jeans from my jeans collection. And, I've done them in denim again and also in corduroy."

Sui says her choice of fabrics allows women to easily mix day and evening separates.

Designer Anna Sui

"I'm using a lot of chiffon and crepe de chine for prints," she says. "I'm using some really interesting silk jerseys and rayon jerseys, where I've done interesting kind of stitching to finish the edges. So they're as raw as possible, but they do have a finish on them."

A hat tops practically every outfit, from knit caps to felt fedoras. But Sui says she relies on jewelry to add the finishing touch.

"There's a lot of beads that are made of natural stone, glass, plastic and everything mixed together," she says. "And it kind of creates that same fragmented look that the (Fauvist) paintings have."

CNN Style Correspondent Elsa Klensch contributed to this report.

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The Fauves