Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Button Wednesday : Patrick Kelly



It is Wednesday again, so it's BUTTON DAY on my blog !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


picture by styleandcultureblog

This Button Wednesday is about fashion designer Patrick Kelly. As a teenager I began collecting pictures of fashion designs from magazines and glued them all in many scrap books, which I still have :) One of those books was dedicated to buttons (and yes, the button disease started very early with me...). When I looked into that scrap book last week, I saw the pictures of Patrick Kelly's famous button dresses and thought I have to show them to you and tell you a bit about Patrick Kelly.
picture by mrpeacockstyle


I found out that The Brooklyn Museum had a Patrick Kelly Retrospective in 2004. I shortened their introduction a bit and here it is:
In the 1980s the young African American fashion designer Patrick Kelly took Paris by storm, becoming the first American member of the Chambre Syndicale du Prêt-à-Porter (the governing body of the prestigious French ready-to-wear industry). A native of Mississippi, Patrick Kelly was influenced during his early years by the creativity and fashion sense of his female relatives, who often added embellishments to simple store-bought garments, as well as by the fashion magazines his grandmother brought home from the white household where she worked as a domestic. As a young adult, Kelly moved to Atlanta, where he sold recycled clothes and worked without pay as a window dresser at the Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche Boutique. He later lived in New York, where he attended Parsons School of Design. It was in Paris, during the mid- to late 1980s that Kelly found his greatest success. He began by selling dresses on the street and working as a costumer for the nightclub Le Palais. His flamboyant garments became soon popular, and he started to make collections in 1985. Such well-known stores as Henri Bendel, Bloomingdale’s, and Bergdorf Goodman carried his Paris designs, and celebrities Cicely Tyson, Bette Davis, Grace Jones, and Isabella Rosellini were among his clients. Sadly he died from AIDS in 1990 at the age of 35.


Some of Kelly’s most memorable garments incorporated masses of multicolored buttons. Rightly, you can call him the fashion king of buttons.


I also found a great interview with Patrick Kelly on the net; it gives a good insight in his character and his career. You can see it here.


He did not only made button dresses, he made everything with buttons, like these gloces, and his giant button brooches.


(last four pictures by 1stdibs)



Have you seen a lovely, beautiful, stunning, crazy button or button-related thingy, or did you make something with a button / buttons, or did you even make buttons yourself, blog about it on your blog on Wednesday, and give the link here in the comments so that everybody can enjoy it !!

8 comments:

zsazsazsu said...

I found a cute one too :
http://pinterest.com/pin/24441079/

gorgeous finds again ! Where do you keep finding them ...

BHB Kidstyle said...

I always new there was a future for buttons in the fashion world! :)

Stephanie Kilgast said...

ah fun fashion! and interesting to know your button obsession started early :)

Miss Val's Creations said...

How creative is he?!?! I love the Eiffel Tower on the dress! ~Val

Colours and Textures said...

An interesting post, thanks.
My post for Button Wed is
http://colours-textures.blogspot.com/2011/06/button-wednesday.html

Erika Price said...

Wow - had no idea buttons were so popular in fashion! Erika Price Jewelry

l'actrice said...

Love how you bring always news from the button world:-)

Our Hands For Hope said...

I loved Patrick Kellys work. he was always so over the top and colorful!