Anna Sui gets a degree, and her due

New York

"THE robes are polyester," Anna Sui said on Friday, with a look of mock horror as she shrugged on a gown for a college graduation ceremony roughly four decades late.

It was in the early 1970s that Sui overheard two seniors in the lunchroom of Parsons School of Design mention an opening for a designer at Erika Elias' neo-hippie fashion label Charlie's Girls. Racing home, she threw together a portfolio, applied for the job and got it. Then, at 21, she promptly dropped out of school.