Patrick Kelly: Social Commentator

A designer’s work does not need to span decades and eras to be influential. In fact, even more
notoriety and traction can be gained from a more or less shorter career due to the rapid rise and
remembrance of its success. Patrick Kelly’s career, although short-lived, was instrumental in
furthering the conversation about Blackness and Black people, or rather, at times, lack thereof,
in fashion.

Born in Mississippi during pre-civil rights time, his muses for fashion and design came early on
in his life: his grandmother brought home fashion magazines from the houses she cleaned, and
his seamstress aunt taught him to sew. Kelly’s upbringing in Southern America was woven into
each and every one of his pieces, pieces that would see runways and make statements all over
the world. While he struggled in the beginning to become a designer, upon moving to New York
and meeting Black supermodel Pat Cleveland, who truly admired his work, she advised him to
move to Paris, and he followed suit in 1980. And just like that, Kelly’s styles took off severely,
and were on the likes of Grace Jones and Isabella Rossellini. In 1987, the large fashion
conglomerate Warnaco invested in his business.

While some of the best were wearing his looks, Kelly never strayed from including his Southern
and Black roots in his clothing. With vibrant, mismatched colors and buttons, Kelly always said
he was inspired by his family, but it was the social commentary on racism that his clothing quite
literally had on them that made him a force to be reckoned with; in fashion and in politics. In
1985, Kelly had a model walk down the runway clad in a white dress adorned with cartoon
images of Black face on it; these cartoons had wide eyes, red lips, and large dangling earrings.
It was come to be known that these cartoons were Kelly’s own interpretation of the golliwog, a
fictional black character that first appeared in an English children’s book in 1885 that came to be
known as a widely-understood symbol for racism; as the character was described in its early
depictions as being “ugly yet friendly” and “a horrid sight, the blackest gnome.” Kelly himself
had experienced racism with growing hp in Mississippi, and his usage of the golliwog created a
subtle yet striking commentary on the racism in fashion and the racism in the world in general.

Despite his work and his intelligent statement, discussion of this monumental piece and runway
show is almost non-existent: most will not acknowledge these pieces or the message that Kelly
was trying to convey through his design.

As designers work to make more statements about the state of fashion and the fashion industry
in terms of its lack of diversity and apparent racism many times, it is from designers such as
Patrick Kelly where some of this impetus and determination comes from. Though Kelly’s career
was cut short due to his death at age 35, his work remains more fitting now than perhaps it ever
did. It is time to recognize the groundwork Kelly laid for activist fashion.

By: Emily Goldberg