Patrick Kelly’s Joyful Black Dresses

A typical Patrick Kelly fashion show turns the runway into a nightclub. Models dance down the runway in tight dresses — small, simple pieces made grand by the addition of whimsical adornments. My first exposure to the designer was in 2017, at an exhibit titled “Derrick Adams: Patrick Kelly, The Journey” at the Harlem Studio Museum. On the walls were collages of flat pattern pieces and bright cardstock that blended into forms which were analogous to Kelly’s finished pieces. Last year, during a visit to the In America collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume institute, I saw what is perhaps his most famous work—a fitted black dress from his Fall/Winter 1986-1987 collection. This uniquely striking piece is mid-thigh length with long sleeves and a heart-shaped corset made of hundreds of multicolored, candy-like buttons. The heart is so outstandingly vibrant that it almost makes the black dress fade into the background, leaving the viewer to stare at the heart alone.

Hearts were a common motif in Kelly’s work, as they reflected his commitment to love and joy. At his shows, he distributed “Love Lists,” which included a diverse array of items he loved, including lycra dresses, pretty things, fun, all women (fat, skinny, and in between), families (especially grandmothers and mothers), and you! Through his embrace of radical joy, he was able to make a political statement via fashion. In the 1980s, community care was an essential part of combatting the AIDS crisis, and Kelly certainly showed that he cared.

Kelly’s love for buttons came from a childhood memory of his grandmother. Whenever he lost a button on his shirt, his grandmother would replace it with one that didn’t quite match. To avoid drawing attention to the mismatched button, she then added other colored buttons to the shirt. Kelly wholeheartedly embraced this button aesthetic and incorporated it into his designs. In a 1986 interview, he explained the substantial influence that his upbringing had on his approach to design. “I design differently because I am Patrick Kelly, and Patrick Kelly is black, is from Mississippi.” After looking through a fashion magazine and realizing there were no Black models, he decided that he would make clothes for Black women, so they could be in the pages of Vogue.

Kelly approached the celebration of Blackness in a variety of ways in his designs. He employed Black models, expressed love for the Black community, and also referenced elements of Black history in his work as a means of celebrating and reclaiming a fraught past. His logo is a golliwog, a racist caricature inspired by a minstrel doll, which originated as a 19th century children’s book character. One black dress uses buttons to create adorable outlines of golliwog faces. The black fabric acts as the skin of the golliwog, allowing the wearer to physically reappropriate the caricature. When a Black person wears the golliwog dress, they instantly contest its racist origins by showing that living, breathing Blackness is far from the stereotypes the golliwog represents.

An image from Kelly’s Fall/Winter 1989 collection features a Black model wearing a long-sleeved, fitted, black minidress studded with huge silver crystals in the shape of an Eiffel Tower. This dress, to me, reflects the totality of Kelly’s Parisian journey. The crystals in the dress are like disco balls, perhaps a reference to the origin of Kelly’s Parisian career within the club scene. In 1979, when Kelly moved to Paris, he began designing for the nightclub Le Palace, which served diverse clientele of all races and sexual orientations. This culture heavily inspired the staging of Kelly’s lively, diverse runway shows. The model also wears an Eiffel Tower hat and earrings, in a campy overstatement that mirrors the incredible impact that Paris has on the fashion industry as a whole and on Kelly himself. In 1988, after having released 10 womenswear collections under his Parisian label, he became the first American and the first Black person to be inducted into the Chambre Syndicale du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode, the governing body of the ready-to-wear industry.

I love Patrick Kelly not only because of his glamorous, innovative pieces, but also because of his devotion to celebrating Black joy in all of his work. The liveliness of his runway shows is a welcome contrast to the stiffness of many approaches to high fashion. The color black is essential to Kelly’s collections; its darkness allows it to serve as a canvas that highlights the unique brightness of his garments. The effortless simplicity of a little black dress makes it the perfect canvas to be adorned with elements that reflect the identity of the wearer–shiny buttons, fluffy bows, huge dice, plastic lips, or picture frames. The Kelly approach is reflected in shows like Harvard’s Eleganza, which features dancing and allows participants to explore joy while expressing their own personal style. Patrick Kelly is famously quoted as saying “I want my clothes to make you smile.” For me, he has certainly succeeded.

Onyx E. Ewa ‘24 is an Art, Film, and Visual Studies concentrator in Winthrop House. Their column “All Black Everything” appears on alternate Thursdays.