Anna Sui inhabits a unique place in fashion. While other designers are driven by the trend of the moment, the Anna Sui aesthetic remains true to its bohemian, free-spirited roots, whether it’s played out in her clothes favored by rock stars and models or her signature beauty line, with its instantly recognizable black lacquer packaging. With her cosmetics collection celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, the designer gave us a tour of her favorite products and the stories behind them — along with a peek into what’s on her own vanity.

We met with the disarmingly cool and laid back Ms. Sui at her Manhattan showroom. With its lavender walls, girly furniture and racks of glittering dresses, being in the space is like getting a glimpse inside the her artistic brain.

“I just got back from a tour promoting our new fragrance, La Nuit de Bohème. We had done La Vie de Bohème last season, and that was the first fragrance that we ever actually used the fashion for the inspiration. It was inspired by Anna Sui style — everyone always talks about Anna Sui as very bohemian and rock and roll, nostalgic and trendy.”

“The [La Vie de Boheme] bottle was the signature rose and signature butterfly, and we got such a great response to that that we decided to take that same person, that bohemian woman, but take her into the evening, and make her into an almost modern day Scheherazade princess. So she was much more glamorous, much more exotic, and that’s why we decided to do the gold bottle.”

La Nuit de Bohème, $78

“The fragrance we had the most fun with, because you have to go through different incarnations of it. Usually we talk about a concept, and what scents will evoke that concept. When we did this one, La Nuit de Bohème, it has fruit on the top because we’ve been doing a lot of fruity florals for the last few years, but we decided we wanted to make this a little more sophisticated.

Our perfume customer is changing. For the last 10 years, she wanted something very light and kind of casual, but now she’s wanting something more sophisticated, or wanting a wardrobe of fragrances with something light to wear during the day and something more dramatic to wear at night. So what we added to this was oud wood, and there’s also patchouli and amber and cedarwood, which give it that kind of hippie incense thing, which evokes the whole bohemian concept.”

“When we’re testing the different fragrances, like I pass it along to everyone in the office and we have a little chart of who likes it, who doesn’t like it, so that way we get a consensus. Because I think fragrance has to target a wider audience than fashion.”

“Not everyone can afford an Anna Sui dress or a head to toe look, but they can get the same excitement from a tube of lipstick as they can from a dress. It’s got all the fantasy in it — that’s why we pay so much attention to the packaging, to the way the tube looks — all those things are the same things that we put into the fashion. There are always little details that are a little different, that take a little while to notice. On our resort line we have a cat print, but if you look closely, there’s cat lace on it, too — we developed our own lace. I like those little surprises as we’re designing.”

“What I’m most known for is my red lipstick. We actually have two colors that I mix together — 400 and 401. This is the newest version of it, which I just love. There’s a star...I don’t even know how they did that.”

Lipstick, $30

“The rose has always been my favorite flower; my parents always had roses in the garden. And when we were working on the first fragrance, in Union Square there’s that farmers market, and they started getting lavender tea roses. I would go there every Saturday morning and buy a couple bunches of them and put them in my room and close the door, and the whole room would smell like tea rose. So I talked about that when we were talking about developing the product, and all the cosmetics are scented with that tea rose scent, and the rose was on all the packaging.”

Lip balm, $21

“I’ve had bangs since I was in kindergarten. Of course I’ve grown them out a couple times, but I always go back to them — I think I look better with bangs. Garren cuts my hair, and I mean, he’s such a genius that every time he cuts it, the way it hangs is so perfect.”

“I use this cleanser which was a big change for me, because all my life I had bad skin, and I always had to use stuff to dry it — astringents and things like that — and this is oil cleanser. But when I started using this my skin completely changed, and I swear by it, every morning and every night. It takes off all the black eyeliner and everything. It really changed the consistency of my face. It’s amazing.”

Deep Cleansing Oil, $30

“My second show, there was a company that had just developed temporary tattoos, and so we had all these butterflies and we them put them on the girl’s thigh with the miniskirt. I remember seeing this movie, I Love You Alice B. Toklas, and this hippie girl had a tattooed butterfly on her thigh and was wearing little miniskirts, and I always thought that looked so sexy. So it became one of the icons and you can see it in my store — it’s decorated with different types of butterflies. I love the shape of a butterfly — it’s very Art Nouveau and it also represents freedom, a certain lifestyle, so it just became one of the icons that we use over and over again.”

“I’m so crazy about Art Nouveau, and I’m always sending pictures of buildings I’m looking at, so this is definitely inspired by that, with all the carved roses on the outside. When it’s really humid out, this is a great powder because it’s so fine and you can just put it on and it really soaks up the shininess. And it’s so decorative.”

“I’ve always worn nail polish. Actually I think I started in junior high school, and I remember I was taking piano lessons but I wanted to grow my nails, and my piano teacher kept yelling at me because it was clicking [on the keys]. And I finally said to my mom, ‘I want long nails. I don’t care about the piano!’ I don’t like chipped nails, so I do them twice a week. I switch between black, dark blue, a dark green, and then a lot of times I add glitter.”

“With our ring rouge, we had done that carved rose about seven years ago, and it was such a success and so many people copied it that we had to come up with something new. So this was to celebrate our anniversary, and we did a purple stone in it.”

Rose Ring Rouge, $30

“Sometimes when I go through customs, they’ll say, ‘Oh, that’s the same name as the perfume.’ That’s me! Actually, in Asia I’m more recognized for cosmetics and fragrance than I am for fashion. Which shows how extensive cosmetics and fragrance reach out, because I’ll go to all these places and they didn’t even know I was a fashion designer, they just thought I had this cosmetic and fragrance line.”

“These tins that we’ve developed are so much a part of the world. I love this gypsy caravan feeling — that’s the whole bohemian lifestyle — and we’ve made it kind of psychedelic.”

La Vie de Bohème Limited-Edition Bohemian Caravan, $65

“I think that’s what the customers love, is that it always gives you that fantasy of my world but it’s products that are really great quality and really necessary.”

See the full Anna Sui beauty collection at annasui.com.