A retrospective of the work of black fashion designer Patrick Kelly, who challenged racist stereotypes, will be staged in the fall.
To commemorate his short but highly influential career, “Patrick Kelly: Runway of Love” opens on October 23 at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. The exhibition was originally held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2014, but is scheduled to expand to the West Coast.
Born in Bigburg, Mississippi in 1954, Kelly began selling her designs from a shop inside a beauty salon in Atlanta. He befriended black model Pat Cleveland and encouraged her to move to Paris, where she founded her own fashion house, Patrick Kelly Paris, in 1988. His designs have been worn by stars such as Madonna, Princess Diana, Grace Jones, Cicely Tyson and Bette. Davis.
A model wears a Patrick Kelly Spring/Summer 1989 design at Paris Fashion Week. Photo: Victor Virgile/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images
“He was a pioneer,” Laura Camerlengo, associate curator of costume and textile arts at the San Francisco Art Institute, told fashion industry publication WWD.
“He was born in a time when the South was segregated, grew up in one of the most racist and violent environments, worked in Atlanta, New York, and was the toast of Paris with a successful multi-million dollar company at the time of his death. Surprisingly, he remains one of the few designers to directly address race in his work.
Incorporating racist imagery such as Golliwog and Black Mammy into her designs and using black churches as inspiration, Kelly was a pioneer of the “black camp” aesthetic.
“While there are many ways in which Kelly utilized camp in his designs, runway shows, advertising campaigns, and personal style, perhaps his most memorable use of camp was to create racist imagery. “It came in the form of recycling prejudice and violence,” said Professor Eric Darnell-Pritchard, who is writing a biography of Kelly.
The exhibition will feature 80 costumes and accessories from 1984 to 1990, as well as his collages and sketches in progress. Kelly was the first black American designer to be voted into the Fédération Française de la Couture, the French fashion industry’s governing body.
Last year, his open letter to the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) launched the Kelly Initiative, which calls for greater transparency and inclusivity in the fashion world.
“Kelly called attention to absurdity and negative history.” [racist] I express images while at the same time repurposing those images to create beauty and joy in my own way,” said Darnell Pritchard.
