Keeping Up is Knowing Your History: Patrick Kelly-Fashion Designer

(photo taken from decadesinc.blogspot.com)

As fashion week begins, it is only right that we take a leap back into the past to find out who paved the way for all of our great African American fashion designers. In 1988, Patrick Kelly became the first African American designer inducted into the Chambre Syndicale, the elite French fashion industry organization to which Yves Laurent and Christian Lacroix belong.

The Brooklyn Museum, where some of Kelly's work is on display, describes his work as such:

Some of Kelly's most memorable garments incorporated masses of multicolored buttons or grosgrain ribbons clustered together. Other motifs, like the use of hats and splashy accessories, celebrated his rural southern roots. Kelly also created works using controversial images drawn from popular culture, bringing issues of racial stereotyping to the forefront.


A little background info:

- Native of Vicksburg, Mississippi

- In Atlanta, he sold recycled clothes and worked without pay as a window dresser at the Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche Boutique.

-In New York, he attended Parsons School of Design

-In Paris, selling dresses on the street and working as a costumer for the nightclub Le Palais

-Henri Bendel, Bloomingdale's, and Bergdorf Goodman carried his Paris designs

-He died of AIDS in 1990 at the age of 35

Thank you Patrick Kelly for leading the way for other black fashion designers to "Keep Up". Throughout Fashion Week 2009, may you be remembered.

(sources: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/patrick_kelly/ , African American History for Dummies by Ronda Racha Penrice)