Patrick Kelly: Runway of Love

I don’t know if I’ve ever gone to an exhibit more appropriately named as Patrick Kelly: Runway of Love opening June 25, 2022 at the Peabody Essex Museum. Though fashion designer Patrick Kelly (1954 – 1990) died from AIDs over three decades ago, love continues to emanate from his designs on view at this Salem main-stay.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Kelly was primarily self-taught with the exception of a few years at New York’s Parsons School of Design. Born in 1954 in Mississippi and raised in the American South, he found inspiration in his black heritage. He also drew on his time on the New York and Paris club scenes and his muses, including his grandmother. She was the one he credited with introducing him to the world of fashion. But it was the absence of black women in the glossy magazines she shared with him that inspired Kelly to eventually design pieces for every woman.

And 75 of those fully accessorized runway ensembles that he created between 1984 and 1989 are on display the PEM. Large white walls are used as movie screens to display footage from the designer’s fashion shows, 14 collections in 6 years, culminating with Kelly’s own appearance on the runway. Watching him walk with iconic models like Pat Cleveland, wearing his oversized, bibbed denim overalls and white PARIS cap, you immediately connect with his Cheshire cat smile and kind eyes. I found his demeanor refreshing in an occupation where smiles are rarely considered en vogue (think Lagerfeld and Beckham, not to mention the models).

Maybe it was his resourcefulness, starting with a borrowed sewing machine and selling his designs on the street, that made him express his well-earned success through that smile. It could be how lucky he felt to have been gifted that one-way ticket to Paris in 1979 that subsequently launched his career and his own label, Patrick Kelly Paris. It could be the fact that he was the first American and the first Black designer elected into the elite Chambre Syndicale du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode. Or it could simply be the happiness he felt in finding love with his business and life partner, Bjorn Guil Amelan. Whatever it was, it’s infectious.

At Patrick Kelly: A Runway of Love of course you will be amazed at all he accomplished. But more importantly, you will feel the love that he put into every stitch, every button, every ensemble he brought to life. And in the end, that will be his legacy. Love.

Love for his craft, love for his adopted hometown of Paris, love for his family and his love for life. It’s only too sad that that life of talent, joy, and love, was cut short. And while we should be grateful for what he brought to fashion while he was on earth, it makes me wonder what we could be seeing from him today.

Kelly once famously said that, “Nothing is impossible,” a quote that you’re left with as you walk out the door of the exhibit. And after going from smalltown Mississippi to being the toast of Paris in just a few short years, Kelly should know.