Buttons & Revolution
With color, irony, and courage, Patrick Kelly rewrote fashion history, proving that joy itself can be a radical act.
Paris, colors and buttons are part of Patrick Kelly's loving memory and symbols he used on his creations. Via Instagram. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
Patrick Kelly's story starts in Mississippi. Raised by strong women, the stylist. Wait a minute, aren't all women who raise kids strong? Ok, back to little Patrick. He grew up seeing the female figures in his life creating outfits from remnants fabrics and reading the fashion magazines his grandmother brought home from the house where she worked.
It was after noticing how there were no black people on those pages that Kelly decided to become a fashion designer. If his grandmother said that nobody had time to design for them, he would be the one to do it. And he beautifully did.
Born in the USA, his career was raised in France. This journey began in Atlanta, where he created displays for Yves Saint Laurent store windows at River Gauche and sold upcycled clothes he thrifted. Next stop was New York, as a student of Parsons School of Design. His colleagues remember him very tenderly but it was in the night club scene that Kelly got to establish strong connections in the fashion universe. During this time, he received from Pat Cleveland, model and friend, a one-way ticket to Paris. It was in the city of lights that everything took shape.
What started as homemade chicken and original designs sold on the streets became a full time job making costumes for a nightclub, Le Palais. Not too long after, he was the first Black designer (and American) to be voted into the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, one of fashion's most prestigious associations. Soon enough names like Bette Davis, Madonna, Naomi Campbell and Iman were among his clients.
Kelly was known as such a workaholic that according to his partner, Bjorn Guil Amelan, in an interview for AnOther Magazine, he kept a portable sewing machine and fabric on his bed. While there was fabric on it, there was no sleep.
His grandmother is the inspiration of one of the most iconic aspects in his portfolio: the unmatched colorful buttons, like the ones she kept in a jar and sewed in his clothes whenever he lost the originals. Beyond affectionate and fun, his designs were also very political as he took in his rural southern references too. Never shying away from the past, but embracing it with power and pride. It's rare to find a designer that captives people both by talent and a loving personality, but this was Kelly. He was kind, witty, dedicated and political.
A six page article on ELLE Magazine was also one of the big moments of Patrick Kelly's career. Photo by Oliviero Toscani, via Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
Kelly liked to reframe racist symbols, turning controversial imagery from popular culture into provocative political statements. He used these elements without captions or explanations, deliberately invoking painful histories to challenge people and keep memory alive. One of his signature gestures was carrying tiny Black doll pins in his pockets, representing the caricatural “pickaninny” figures that once symbolized disobedience and parental neglect, serving as racist warnings to white children. For Patrick, these dolls became symbols of history, rebellion, and resistance. By gifting them to those he met, he passed on a quiet yet powerful message: we must remember, confront, and resist the injustices woven into Black history. Bette Davis, actress and close friend, took hers to a live interview with David Letterman, while wearing one of Kelly's creations.
In the climax of his career, the artist got diagnosed with AIDS and died not long after his last runaway show, Lisa Loves the Louvre. A little self-explanatory, it took references from the famous Leonardo da Vinci painting and Paris's most celebrated museum. The collection played with frames, symbols and was a love letter to the city of love.
This sums up his work: bows, buttons, colors, authenticity, irony, camp. It's a celebration of memory and yet a reminder of the horrible past. It's about showing your roots and making something beautiful.
Patrick Kelly (1954 - 1990) is one of the brightest yet underrated names of our time. His radical, camp, fun and activist designs never outshone his personality, which also had such a light that got well-known, too. He said he wanted to make clothes that make you smile. It's been over 35 years since his death and people are still smiling because of his mark on the world. Of course the name of his late exhibition is "Runaway of Love". It could not be different.
