Fashion 88 : Lighthearted Outfits by a Hot New Designer
“Oh, Miss Davis is incredible. She’s a star, star, star !” Patrick Kelly said, as he sips cappuccino inside Rodeo Drive’s fashion temple with the yellow-and-white striped awning, currently called Fred Hayman’s Giorgio.
The Davis to whom he refers is Bette. It may seem an unlikely duo, the octogenarian screen legend and the young, Mississippi-born, Paris-based designer. But they have become the best of buddies.
She wears his clothes (as do Princess Diana, Farrah Fawcett and Grace Jones). He was on the select little list for her 80th birthday dinner April 5.
“He reminds me of Halston,” Fred Hayman said just before his own recent in-store soiree for the designer, where Beluga caviar and Dom Perignon flowed like Sparklett’s.
“We at Bazaar think he’s a hot new designer,” said Nancy Dinsmore, West Coast editor of Harper’s Bazaar, at the party to pay her respects.
“He has no competition in that particular focus,” echoed Eleanor Phillips Colt, Vogue’s West Coast editor, also there to toast Kelly.
He is hardly the picture of the unapproachable, chicer-than-thou type. His uniform is a “Paris” baseball cap and oversize denim overalls, which he says he even wears to formal dinners. The pockets are always stuffed with tiny black baby-doll pins, his own symbol of good luck. These he hands out to admirers of his lighthearted tailored suits accompanied by watermelon-shaped hats, zebra-stripe dresses worn with earrings made from spools of thread, and stretch evening wear made of blue or black denim.
Kelly won’t divulge his age, saying “I don’t remember.” But the bearded, ponytailed designer remembers everything about his birthplace, Vicksburg, Miss. Growing up there, he worked with his grandfather in the fields, raising corn, pecans and squash.
Kelly’s trademark--large, decorative, multicolored buttons--are leitmotifs of his collections. They were inspired by his grandmother, “the most chic woman in the world.”
“As a kid,” Kelly said, “I was always ripping buttons off my clothes, and my grandmother was always replacing them. Sometimes they’d be red, sometimes blue or brown. One day I looked down and I had all different-color buttons and everyone laughed. It stayed in my mind.”
Kelly moved from New York to Paris seven years ago, started sewing dresses in his apartment and selling them on the streets. Now, Warnaco, the New York-based corporation, backs him and has worldwide rights to his ready-to-wear collection.
“Warnaco stands for Warner bras, Hathaway shirts,” said Kelly. Being affiliated with them “lends credibility. People take you more seriously.”
Linda Wachner, company president, said she expects his line to reach wholesale sales of $8 million this year, and double that amount next year. Two-thirds of his sales are in the United States, she said. For Kelly, the big payoff is often in smiles. “I like my clothes to make women happy,” he said.
