Convicted con artist-turned-PR partner Anna Sorokin has turned her court-mandated ankle monitor into a fashion accessory — and she hasn’t stopped there.
In the few minutes that Sorokin, 33 — a.k.a. Anna Delvey — has between walking from her car to a New York City courthouse for her ongoing immigration case, she has seized the opportunity to make as much of a statement as possible. That has meant partnering with designer Shao Yang, who designs under her eponymous label SHAO New York. Delvey and veteran fashion publicist Kelly Cutrone have teamed to represent SHAO through their pop-up PR agency, The Outlaw Agency.
Sorokin, who is currently on house arrest in upstate New York during her immigration case — which follows her 2019 conviction for theft and larceny — is letting her clothes do the talking while she is banned from social media (another result of her immigration case). One way she and Yang have done this is with a “scarlet letter” theme in two of Sorokin’s recent court appearances.
On May 16, Sorokin arrived to the New York City courthouse wearing a black oversize twill suit with a high-waisted pencil skirt and a high slit paired with a white cotton button-down shirt with built-in shoulder pads and a silk velvet pussy bow tie. The blazer featured a bright red “A” on it — all co-designed with Yang for her line.
For her June 6 appearance, Sorokin once again brought out her scarlet letter, this time as a Swarovski crystal “A” on her ankle monitor. She paired it with an off-white silk and wool blend square-neck double-breasted shift dress with bold shoulders and a matching pussy bow, also co-designed with Yang for her label.
With both looks, Yang says they wanted to do something “tailored” but “edgy” that still had a “little sexiness.”
Cutrone, who has been working with Sorokin since last year, tells PEOPLE that the monogram is Sorokin’s “way of commenting on the vilification of Anna.”
Yang adds, “We always include some sort of embellishment to her look, whether it’s the Scarlet ‘A,’ or it’s bedazzling an ‘A’ on her ankle monitor, something a little bit more cheeky that we do. The scarlet letter used to stand for adulterers, but now I think it’s just a metaphor for persecuted women.”
Sorokin says she’s tired of her character being beaten down — and she’s especially tired of being labeled the “fake heiress,” following her 2019 conviction for attempted grand larceny, grand larceny and theft services. (She served three years of her four-to-12 year sentence and was released in 2021, with authorities from Immigration and Customs Enforcement taking her into custody weeks later. She was released on a $10,000 bond and has remained in 24-hour home confinement since.)
“I hate it,” Sorokin, who spent years posing as the daughter of a wealthy German diplomat, tells PEOPLE of the “fake heiress” label. “I think that’s the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life.”
However, she still loves to own the moment and is harnessing the power of those few minutes she has out of the house for her court appointments. When she arrived at the courthouse back in May, she says security “kept an eye” on her, because they thought she was going to stage a rogue fashion show — much like the one she, Cutrone and Yang put on during New York Fashion Week last fall.
“After the hearing, they were following me around,” she says. “They didn’t escort me out, but they kept an eye on me. They tried to make small talk, and I was like, ‘I’m just waiting for my car. Can I just sit downstairs?’ It was a public area! He was like, ‘Well, is your car coming?’ I was like, ‘Is there an issue that I’m here? I’m not making any issues. I’m just sitting here quietly.’ And he’s like, ‘Well, I don’t really know anything about your story, but is that true that you guys were about to do a fashion show in court today?’ I was like, ‘What?'”
Cutrone says she hadn’t even considered turning the courthouse into a runway.
“It wasn’t planned,” Cutrone insists. (Although they had photographers for the New York Post and Shutterstock on hand to document Sorokin’s trip to court.)
“We had three minutes of international coverage for no cost,” Cutrone says, pointing to how major that is for Yang as the designer.
“I wholeheartedly trust them with my brand,” Yang tells PEOPLE of working with Sorokin and Cutrone. “I think it’s going really far. They’re brilliant with any ideas that they come up with. I love working with them. There’s nothing that I would change.”
Sorokin says she wants to highlight the designer’s talent and make the most out of her “adverse situation” in a way that’s not “exploitative.” This has manifested in doing their NYFW show last season and carried through into her courthouse fashions — and will continue for the foreseeable future.
“I guess that’s the big goal here: to channel it into something else, which I think worked out so great with Shao, because I would be getting attention for anything that I would’ve done,” Sorokin says. “Everything automatically attracts attention, but I think we made something more out of it, I hope, for Shao.”
She adds: “Negative things happen to people all the time. I think a lot of people relate to that — it doesn’t have to be exactly the same as what happened to me, but it’s about how you turn it into something positive.”
