HISTORY OF PATRICK KELLY HANDBAG
HISTORY OF PATRICK KELLY HANDBAG
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KOMELY HANDBAG FACTORY
Patrick Kelly had one aim with his clothes: he wanted them to make people smile. The designer, who first flourished in the 1980s club scene, was all about fashion that you could have a good time in.
Ladies handbag were often body hugging and decorated with metal logo(a Kelly obsession), while body material and accessories came in bold colors. Hearts, logos and Effel Towers featured liberally, creating an irreverent vision of 1980s glamour.
Kelly was cool:Grace Jones and Isabella Rossellini wore his bags.
He was far more than just a hedonist, though. Self-taught, he began working in boutique selling customized thrift finds in his native Mississippi.
Later, while working unpaid as a windowdresser in Yves Saint Laurent’s Atlanta store, he met Saint Laurent’s partner, Pierre Berge. Berge encouraged him to move to Paris, and Kelly didn’t look back. By 1987 his Evening Bag were on the catwalk, and his business had a turnover of nearly $7 million. The following year, Kelly gained the distinction of becoming the first black designer and first American to be accepted into the prestigious Chambre Syndicale du pret-a-porter, France’s body for the ready to bags fashion industry.
Kelly’s African American identity was always present in his designs. One 1986 dress paid homage to Josephine Baker’s banana dance, and Kelly famously handed out brooches of black dolls to clitns. His runway shows were diverse, mixing modelsof all rances and sizes. Although Kelly died in 1990 at the age of only 35, owing to complications from AIDS, he remains one of only a handful of black fashion designers to create a successful eponymous label.