“You have to work hard anywhere and fight, fight, fight, no matter what color, what race you are. And that is what I did.”
- Name: Patrick Kelly
- Born: September 24, 1954
- Died: January 1, 1990
- From: Vicksburg, Mississippi
- Pronouns: He/him
- Occupation: Fashion designer
- Contribution/Impact: Kelly strove in making clothes that made people smile, and he achieved this on the streets, nightclubs, and runways of New York and Paris.
- Known For: Runway of Love (2014)
- Awards: His work has been on exhibitions in Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2014, Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2004, and his fall/winter 1986 collection was featured in FIT’s Black Fashion Designers exhibition in 2017.
- Interesting Fact: Kelly was the first American to be allowed into the elite Parisian fashion designer’s organization called Chambre Syndicale.
Patrick Kelly’s journey into the world of fashion started at an early age where he would read fashion magazines brought home by his mother. After seeing that there were no black women in the magazine Kelly vowed to make clothes for black women and get them into vogue. After deciding college wasn’t right for him, Kelly moved to Atlanta and opened up a little store inside of a beauty salon and sold clothes as well as his own designs. He made enough money to eventually open up a second store. He tried fashion school in New York but his experience in the classes made the experience dreadful so he left the states and went to Paris where he found success.
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