A closer look at Patrick Kelly’s tragically short but outsized influence on fashion

By Bianca Betancourt, CNN

(CNN) — There’s a somber scene in a new documentary about Patrick Kelly, where executive producers Jess Manning and Ray Cornelius are at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center, about to dive into research about the late fashion designer.

To their surprise, there are only seven small boxes, containing photos, sketches, notes, and a scattering of trinkets to go through. It’s a stark contrast to Kelly’s vivid legacy, one that viewers will eventually see depicted in “Love, Patrick: Nothing is Impossible” — a boisterous retelling of how a Black man would unknowingly shape the generations of designers that would come after him.

Before the likes of Telfar Clemens, LaQuan Smith, or the late Virgil Abloh became fashion industry forces, Kelly blazed a trail of his own. In just the six short years when his formal ready-to-wear line was actively in production, Kelly landed a six-page spread in ELLE magazine, maintained a robust clientele that included everyone from Madonna to Cicely Tyson and even Princess Diana, and became the first Black designer to be inducted into what is now known as the Federation de la Haute Couture, France’s governing fashion body.

The documentary will premiere at several film festivals later this summer and offers an intimate look at Kelly’s career, charting his unlikely success and tragic death at 35 due to complications from AIDS. The movie features rarely seen clips from his high-energy fashion shows across Atlanta, New York, and Paris, that starred supermodels like Pat Cleveland, Naomi Campbell and Iman, and interviews with those who worked alongside him.

“What really struck me was the overall plot of this project — that a Southern boy from Vicksburg, Mississippi, made it so big in the world of fashion. That’s the type of underdog story that I love,” said Ryon Horne, who along with his brothers Byron and Tyson directed “Love, Patrick.” Speaking on a video call along with Manning and Cornelius, the three of them wore oversized buttons pinned on their shirts — a small gift from one of Kelly’s former atelier workers while they made the documentary and a way to honor their film subject. “Something that (Kelly’s partner) Bjorn Amelan says in the movie is that Patrick smiled a lot, but there was something behind that smile,” Horne continued. “And in this film you will find out what that truly was. We want people to find out about the real Patrick Kelly… not just the bullet points.”

Kelly was one of the most prominent Black fashion designers of the 1980s, and his peers included Willi Smith, known as a forefather of modern-day streetwear, and Dapper Dan, a beloved auteur of hip-hop haberdashery. But Kelly’s interpretation of haute couture was notably edgy in its own right, with rainbow-colored tulle skirts, sequin encrusted mini dresses, and ornate prints — his imaginative silhouettes bringing to mind the modern day work of a Sergio Hudson, from South Carolina (and who appears in the documentary) or the Louisiana-born Christopher John Rogers. His work was often political, with his cartoonish art prints and couture creations subverting racist iconography from American history. Kelly had sent models down the runway wearing anything from a watermelon bra top and matching headdress to a mini dress featuring golliwog embellishments in order to reclaim some of the most offensive stereotypes that were often birthed in the American south.

Mississippi beginnings

Like many American designers from the south, Kelly traced his initial interest in fashion to his religious upbringing. The sartorial details that shaped his Sunday mornings at church — from pastel pill box hats to sophisticated skirt suits — eventually inspired the bold and whimsical world he crafted under his eponymous label. Knowing that his small hometown wouldn’t be the place to launch a global fashion career, Kelly spent time in Atlanta where he worked as a window dresser and threw his first fashion shows before moving to Paris where his career eventually took off. But Kelly never abandoned his Southern roots.

“He was not afraid to be who he was,” said Manning of Kelly’s warmth and natural charisma. “And the people who came across him fell in love with that.” This was, after all, a man who cooked and sold fried chicken dinners while building up his fashion business, just to make ends meet. “He was born the year that the Brown versus Board of Education came into existence and grew up witnessing the Civil Rights movement,” explained Manning. The film’s title “nothing is impossible,” was actually “Patrick’s mantra.”

“This story is about more than just a Black man going to Paris and becoming a fashion designer,” he added. “It’s a story that everyone can connect to… everyone has a desire to be something great. I don’t care if you’re rich, poor, black, white, gay, straight. It resonates with everyone and that to me is what we hope this film will do.”

‘A sense of freedom’

Paris was the place where it all happened for Kelly. With the help and encouragement of his partner in work and life, Amelan, (who appears at length in the documentary), Kelly grew his namesake line into one of the French capital’s most promising new brands. In a pre-internet, pre-social media era, word-of-mouth marketing was vital and the designer would strategically often dress models in his pieces before they headed off to dance clubs for the night. Paris provided a level of open-mindedness to not only Kelly’s artistry but also his personal life. Being a Black gay man who had the audacity and determination to become a couturier was unheard of at the time, sure; but it also wasn’t impossible.

“There was a sense of freedom that I think that not only Patrick felt, but when Josephine Baker got there, she felt it. Nina Simone felt it. Richard Wright, James Baldwin, all of these Black creatives felt it,” said Cornelius. “Patrick felt like this was a place, similar to Atlanta, that he felt free to be himself and to create. There was this energy to thrive and to make something of yourself, and I think it was just enough pressure. You need pressure to build a diamond. You need pressure to build something great.”

Like Kelly, but decades later, Black designers like Ozwald Boateng, Olivier Rousteing, and Virgil Abloh would see their careers skyrocket in Paris, at their historic appointments at Givenchy, Balmain, and Louis Vuitton. “You can’t have a Virgil Abloh if you didn’t have a Patrick Kelly. There has to be a foundation somewhere, and a lot of times those are stories or individuals that are overlooked because sometimes people just don’t see the relevance of why this person is important,” explained Cornelius.

(The team had planned to reach out to Abloh for the documentary, but production paused during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and then Abloh unexpectedly passed away a year later).

Being able to film in the city where Kelly spent a decade living and working was a non-negotiable for Horne.

“That’s where he really got his footing… I knew we had to go and be on the streets where he was, and we had to see the gate that he hung his clothes on to sell on the same corner down the street from his apartment,” he said. We wanted to be everywhere that Patrick walked and breathed in order to make this story even more vibrant.”

A legacy, revisited

Kelly’s work still permeates culture today. His vintage garments have been part of fashion exhibitions in museums across the US, including recent shows at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco and the SCAD Museum of Art.

Recently, Beyoncé, Zendaya, and Miley Cyrus have worn archival Kelly pieces. Last year, Beyoncé opted for a black, bold-shouldered mini dress with gold buttons sewn into a heart-shaped bustier for a private dinner with former Destiny’s Child members, while Cyrus wore one of the designer’s cheekier ensembles — an Eiffel Tower stud-emblazoned dress — for a press stop in Paris. Zendaya’s stylist Law Roach managed to source an oxblood floral gown that his longtime muse wore for a Met Gala afterparty last year, as well. According to data provided to CNN via luxury resale platform The RealReal, Patrick Kelly garments are among some of the rarest to come across in the vintage market. And amid a spike in searches for ‘80s pieces, modern day demand for Kelly’s pieces is comparable to other cult favorite designers from the decade like a Stephen Sprouse or Claude Montana.

The team behind “Love Patrick” hopes the film will encourage fashion lovers, both young and old, to revisit the life of one of the industry’s most overlooked designers.

“I think Patrick always knew a little bit that he was going to be famous, and the way he treated people throughout his life set him up to be successful,” said Horne. “That was another under plot of Patrick’s story…if you treat people right, karma is going to be on your side. I think that’s what happened in Paris.”

Add to queue: Black trailblazers in fashion

“Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh” (2025)

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and fashion critic Robin Givhan chronicles the rise — and unexpectedly tragic end — of fashion designer Virgil Abloh’s life and career in Make It Ours. Before Abloh’s historic appointment as the first Black artistic director at Louis Vuitton, he was a pivotal figure in Chicago’s burgeoning streetwear scene, the mastermind behind the hypebeast couture at Off-White, and the right-hand man to Kanye West’s 2010’s ascension within fashion.

“The Gospel According to André” (2017)

In Kate Novack’s 2018 film that documents the life and work of the late Vogue editor, viewers learn there won’t ever be another force quite like Andre Leon Talley. The late journalist was an integral part of modernizing and advocating for a more diverse Vogue magazine throughout his 30-year tenure at the publication and was beloved by celebrities for helping overlooked Black talent be taken seriously by the fashion industry powers-that-be.

“Invisible Beauty” (2023)

Model, agent, and activist Bethann Hardison is one of the most important figures within fashion when it comes to advocating for a more inclusive industry. In this visual memoir directed by Hardison alongside Frédéric Tcheng, the Brooklyn native recounts her decades of witnessing fashion’s cultural conscience shift back and forth — and how her inner determination ultimately changed the modern-day modeling industry as a whole.

“Donyale Luna: Supermodel” (2023)

There’s constant debate over who the first true original supermodel was, but there’s no question that Donyale Luna paved the way for a generation of runway regulars. In this documentary, Luna’s life is retraced from her humble beginnings in Detroit, Michigan to becoming the first Black model on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar and British Vogue.

“The Cutting Room Floor” (2018—)

Recho Omondi’s cult favorite podcast is one of just a handful of platforms where one can receive true, unfiltered commentary on the state of fashion today. Conversations with core industry figures like Law Roach, Paloma Elsesser and Salehe Bembury are must-listens.

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