TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/040389/04038900.001

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 13KB | 228 lines

                                                                                PROFILE, Page 66

An Original American In Paris


PATRICK KELLY, Mississippi's smash hit in the tough world of
high fashion, prefers to think of himself as a "black male
Lucille Ball"

By Margot Hornblower


    Afternoon shadows slid through the archways of the Louvre
Palace into the splendor of a 16th century courtyard. Across
the cobblestones, as if for a medieval tournament, white tents
opened their flaps to costumed crowds. Celebrities, fashion
journalists and retailers from Kansas City to Kuwait milled
about. Suddenly, without fanfare, a man in cut-off overalls, a
ponytail and phosphorescent orange hightops strolled onto an
enclosed runway and slowly spray-painted a huge red heart on a
white backdrop. With the exaggerated staginess of a Looney Tune,
he turned to the audience, pressed a finger to his lips, as if
to say "Shhh!" and tiptoed out. Only then did thumping rock
music explode, spotlights ignite and towering models burst onto
the runway in kaleidoscopic color.

    Thus did Patrick Kelly, the guy in the size 56 denims,
rocket into the stratosphere of high fashion last fall as the
first American ever admitted into the clubby, self-important
Chambre Syndicale, the pantheon of 43 Paris-based designers who
may show at the Louvre. The French buzzed and clucked at the
outrageousness of the new upstart. After all, who but Kelly
could boast that only eight years ago he was peddling his
clothes on the sidewalk of the Boulevard St.-Germain, calling
out to passersby in a Mississippi drawl, "Tres chic! Pas cher!"?
Now he's selling on four continents. "Patrick is refreshing
because he isn't trying to be divine," says Mary Ann Wheaton,
who runs Kelly's worldwide operations.

    As much as any designer today, Kelly blurs the line between
fashion and show biz. "I think of myself as a black male
Lucille Ball," he says. "I like making people laugh." Indeed,
can one imagine the reclusive Yves Saint Laurent skateboarding
a la Kelly through Paris' seedier neighborhoods? Picture crusty
Karl Lagerfeld nude from the waist up, posing for Vanity Fair,
with red buttons over his nipples and 16 satin bows on his
pigtails? Such antics have charmed the powerful French fashion
press. "Le mignon petit noir Americain," enthused one Paris
newspaper -- although in America being called a cute little
black would seem more like an insult.

    For Kelly, born and raised in Vicksburg, Miss., being an
American black in Paris -- and reveling in it -- is a cachet
that opens doors. His logo is a grinning golliwog. On promotion
tours he startles fans by handing out 3-in. plastic black doll
pins as mementos. His first Louvre show, a spoof on the Mona
Lisa, included such numbers as "Jungle Lisa loves Tarzan''
(decollete leopard-print gowns) and "Moona Lisa"
(Plexiglas-bubble headgear and silver-star-studded dresses). At
his second Louvre show, two weeks ago, the crowd shrieked and
whistled its approval for such outfits as "Cowboys" (fringed
jackets and pony-skin patterns) and "Blackamoors" (gold and
silver turbans over satin cocktail suits). The invitation to the
show featured a photo of Kelly naked but for a gilt loincloth.
"He's very exotic to the French," says Nina Dausset, a former
Elle editor. "He has his own folklore."

    Even Horatio Alger would find it improbable that the first
American to break into the charmed circle of the world's
fashion capital -- where others have tried and failed -- would
be a two-time college dropout who once slept in Atlanta
restaurants when he had no home, collected rejection slips on
Manhattan's Seventh Avenue and was evicted from his Harlem
apartment for not paying rent. "What Patrick has done, no one
else has done," says Audrey Smaltz, a New York City fashion-show
producer. Since July 1987, when Kelly signed a licensing
contract with the $600 million conglomerate Warnaco, his
business has shot up from $795,000 a year to $7 million a year.
"Behind all of Kelly's Folies-Bergere, there are real clothes
with high-voltage whimsy," says Bernard Ozer of Associated
Merchandising Corp. "He's selling well in an uphill market."

    In Kelly's Rue du Parc-Royal headquarters, Aunt Jemima rag
dolls flop on a Louis Vuitton footlocker. Josephine Baker
posters loom over a rainbow coalition of assistants. When
Kelly's cousin Michael Thomas, a 345-lb. trucker, came to see
the Louvre debut, he brought 20 packages of grits. ("Patrick
said, `If you don't bring no grits, don't come," said Thomas,
grinning.) The models really chowed down. "I'm not the Great
Black Hope, honey," says Kelly. "But it's like the old song,
`You use what you got to get what you want.' "

    Kelly's friends know him for his French-fries frenzies and
chili-dog cravings. But beware of stereotypes. A Redskins cap
planted on his head, the designer can also be found at his
favorite restaurant, L'Ambroisie, over a $150 lunch of scallops
and Sauterne, waxing eloquent on the merits of white vs. black
truffles. Anyone who refers to Kelly's origins as "poor black"
is quickly set straight with a portrait of working-class warmth.
"They expect that you come off some family that picked cotton
with holes in their shoes," he says. "My grandmother worked for
rich white people. Our hand-me-downs were good hand-me-downs!"
Though Kelly's grandmother was a cook, his mother was a home
economics teacher with a master's degree, his father, a
fishmonger, insurance agent and cabdriver.

    Interviews lurch into free association: how the shopping
malls in Thailand look just like the ones in Mississippi; why
he hung real crystals on his black knit dresses ("The spiritual
thing was cute, but mainly I liked the way they looked"); how
maybe he lends clothes to certain actresses, "but Goldie Hawn
paid cold cash"; reflections on culture ("I like museums -- but
really fast. I can do a museum in half an hour"). Autobiography
can be selective. He won't reveal his age (mid-30s by
deduction). "It puts you in a category," he insists. "You're not
fresh enough to be new." Ask him about his father leaving home,
and he sidesteps the question with an ode to his dad's shoes
(black-and-white pony skin). Kelly wants to remember Mississippi
merry, not Mississippi burning. But one memory sticks: when
secondhand books were shipped over from the white elementary
school across town, he said, "they'd color in the faces of Dick
and Sally so they'd be black when they got to us."

    Kelly plasters gardenias on his gowns, makes hats in the
form of watermelon slices and flaunts pink flounces: inspiration
that comes, he says, from the full-figured ladies parading to
Vicksburg's Baptist church on Sundays. Ever since an aunt taught
him to sew, Kelly has known what he wanted to be. Nonetheless,
at Jackson State University, then an all-black school, he went
through a "militant stage." His best friend hanged himself in
jail. "I remember singing `Burn, baby, burn,' and knowing what
it meant," Kelly says. And there was the teacher, Michael Thomas
recalled, who "told Pat he'd never amount to anything. Right
after that, Pat dropped out."

    Fresh off a Greyhound bus in Atlanta, Kelly lodged six
months with a "crazy pimp" he'd met on the street. "Whores, drag
queens would give me their money to hold for them," he said.
"People liked me." In Atlanta he decorated Yves Saint Laurent
windows for free. ("He was my hero. I tried to do them just the
way Mr. Saint Laurent would have wanted them.") A job sorting
clothes for Amvets gave Kelly access to discarded Chanel suits
and old beaded gowns. Soon he had his own antique-clothing
boutique. When ends didn't meet, "I'd rob stained glass out of
homes that were being demolished and sell it." Later, at New
York City's prestigious Parsons School of Design, Kelly would
"sell other people their homework" to make tuition payments. He
hung out with the glitterati at Studio 54. "I wanted to be
somebody so bad," he sighs. But broke again, he dropped out. No
designer would hire him.

    Kelly's story has a mythic quality: fairy godparents pop up
at the right time, dark perils lead to happy endings. An old
friend from Atlanta, model Pat Cleveland, ran into him on the
street. She suggested Paris and, unasked, sent him a one-way
ticket. The Warnaco deal had the same Kellyesque serendipity.
Three years ago, Kelly was free-lancing while building his own
label. "If we'd have sneezed, we'd have gone bankrupt," he
remembers. Enter journalist Gloria Steinem on assignment to do
a profile about Kelly for NBC's Today show. Steinem introduced
Kelly to Warnaco CEO Linda Wachner.

    When he first got to Paris, Kelly holed up in a small
hotel, sharing a tiny room with a 6-ft. 2-in. model named Kim
("Her feet stuck out from the end of the bed"). He sewed like
a madman, buying only enough fabric to make the next dress.
From selling clothes at a flea market, he progressed to making
costumes for a discotheque and, with the help of his business
partner, Bjorn Amelan, outfits for a trendy Right Bank boutique
and for Benetton. By 1985, his own little black dresses,
decorated with bows and buttons, were selling out at Bergdorf
Goodman's. Now, with Warnaco behind him, Kelly is expanding
rapidly, with 60% of his sales in the U.S. and a booming demand
in Europe and the Far East.

    Months before a show, Kelly is in high gear. Red sweat
pants peeping from under the overalls, he sits high at his
drafting table, drawing in deft strokes, crumpling up sketches
one after another and sipping hot tea from a tall glass.
Interruptions are constant. "No!" he barks, surveying a list of
proposed models. "We need someone with de vraies fesses -- a
real fanny." The sultry beauties who glower through most French
fashion shows must learn to prance, dance, skip and even smile
for Kelly's semiannual follies. He dismisses another candidate
offhandedly: "Tell her she can do my show if she stops doing
drugs." Meanwhile, the designer darts in and out of the sewing
room, nipping a tuck here and pinning a fold there on a muslin
pattern. Later, salesmen unload briefcases of fabrics. Kelly
picks up a purple knit. He smells it. "Combien?" he inquires.
The answer: 125 francs ($20) per meter. "Why so much?" Kelly
challenges. The bargaining is serious: Kelly, whose dresses run
from $395 to $2,200, builds his business on providing a less
expensive alternative to other Paris-based designers.

    From the first sketch to the moment he spray-paints his red
heart on the runway, Kelly wrestles with the tiniest details.
Two hours before the last show, he was backstage in the Louvre
tent amid models, dressers, seamstresses, hairdressers, makeup
artists, lighting technicians and stagehands. "Paint those red
lips!" he ordered. "I want you to look like you just got rid of
your third husband!" Dashing through mounds of hats decorated
with rhinestone Eiffel Towers, past racks of pink minks,
turquoise ostrich feathers, Mexican blankets and red sequined
gowns, he fusses with a model's hair. He directs a seamstress
to stitch a new lining in a fur cape. Three minutes before
showtime, Kelly joins hands with everyone for a revival-style
prayer: "Thank God for making us be together," he says. "You
make me so happy." The group bursts into cheers of "Yay! Yay!"
and the music flicks on to the opening song, Real Love.

    While Kelly builds a celebrity clientele with the likes of
Bette Davis, Paloma Picasso and Jane Seymour, he works hard to
keep a high profile: off to a fashion-power AIDS banquet one
night, to the opening of Regine's new nightclub another. The
publicity game is paying off. Licensing negotiations for Kelly
furs, sunglasses and jewelry are under way. The designer is
looking for rental space to house a museum for his collection
of 6,000 black dolls. Paris Match featured a six-page spread of
Grace Jones posing in Kelly's clothes. Michael Douglas stopped
by to chat about making a movie based on his career. At the
Louvre, television cameras from West Germany, Canada, Japan and
the U.S. trailed the designer. "What's the message?" inquired
a correspondent. "It's a heavy glamour trip," Kelly explained.
Then past the clothes bite and on to the personality bite. "Are
you growing up?" she demanded abruptly. "No," said Kelly. "I'm
having fun."