PROFILE, Page 66An Original American In ParisPATRICK KELLY, Mississippi's smash hit in the tough world ofhigh fashion, prefers to think of himself as a "black maleLucille 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
