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Patrick Kelly
Buttoned Up in Love: Dreams Undone
The Influence of Fashion®, in partnership with the Bach Society Festival; and with promotional consideration by Estée Lauder, presents: Buttoned Up in Love: Patrick Kelly and Dreams Unrealized.
This exhibit celebrates the work of the late Patrick Kelly. Known for his use of buttons and heart motifs, Kelly spread joy and love through fashion. He reached the pinnacle of fashion, conquering womenswear with plans of expanding into menswear and fragrance. He also discussed expanding into children’s wear. Sadly, Kelly succumbed to complications of AIDS in 1990.
His work suddenly stopped. The button-embellished corset is left incomplete, symbolizing how Kelly’s life was abruptly cut short.
He discussed expanding into children’s wear. The designs shown are our imagination of what could have been, fulfilling a dream unrealized.
Patrick Kelly’s legacy lives on through modern interpretations of his exuberant suiting, and through fashion’s use of unconventional accoutrements, bringing his sense of love and joy to the next generation.
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Patrick Kelly is one of 150+ African American designers that are featured in our coloring book, "Black Influence: Rising Stars, History Makers, Risk Takers, & Influential Icons in Fashion.”
The Life of Patrick Kelly
Patrick Kelly (1954-1990) took the Parisian fashion scene by storm in the 1980s by introducing his fun, joyous, and sometimes radical, approach to fashion.
Born in Mississippi, Kelly moved to Atlanta in 1974. He designed window displays for Atlanta’s Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche boutique while selling up-cycled vintage designs in his own storefront. Kelly desired expansion and moved to New York in 1979 on the suggestion of model Pat Cleveland; he then moved to Paris in 1980, also at the suggestion of Cleveland (she bought him a first-class plane ticket).
Once there, he sold his vintage designs on the street, while catering fried chicken, and freelance designing in the atelier for Paco Rabanne. Kelly met his partner and business manager, Bjorn Amelan, who helped garner a meeting with the fashion buyer of Victoire boutiques. By 1985, he secured a production deal and sales space with Victoire, a fashion spread in French Elle, and stockists at Bergdorf Goodman in New York and I. Magnin in San Francisco.
Kelly’s use of buttons, dice, and lips as embellishments for day and evening wear, along with his energetic fashion shows, made for superstardom in Paris. He also used racial imagery, including his golliwog symbol and black baby figurines, as visual monikers and brooches. Kelly landed a manufacturing deal with apparel conglomerate Warnaco, in 1987, after Betty Davis wore his designs from head-to-toe on a late night talk show. Kelly then ascended to the pinnacle of fashion when he was admitted into the Chambre Syndicale du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode, France’s prestigious governing body for designers, in 1988. He was the first, and only, American designer to be admitted.
Kelly fell ill in 1989, and died from complications of AIDS, on New Year’s Day 1990.
