Afternoon shadows slid through the archways of the Louvre Palace into the splendor of a 16th century courtyard. Across the cobblestones, as if for a medieval tournament, white tents opened their flaps to costumed crowds. Celebrities, fashion journalists and retailers from Kansas City to Kuwait milled about. Suddenly, without fanfare, a man in cut-off overalls, a ponytail and phosphorescent orange hightops strolled onto an enclosed runway and slowly spray-painted a huge red heart on a white backdrop. With the exaggerated staginess of a Looney Tune, he turned to the audience, pressed a finger to his lips, as if to say "Shhh!" and tiptoed out. Only then did thumping rock music explode, spotlights ignite and towering models burst onto the runway in kaleidoscopic color.
Thus did Patrick Kelly, the guy in the size 56 denims, rocket into the stratosphere of high fashion last fall as the first American ever admitted into the clubby, self-important Chambre Syndicale, the pantheon of 43 Paris- based designers who may show at the Louvre. The French buzzed and clucked at the outrageousness of the new upstart. After all, who but Kelly could boast that only eight years ago he was peddling his clothes on the sidewalk of the Boulevard St.-Germain, calling out to passersby in a Mississippi drawl, "Tres chic! Pas cher!"? Now he's selling on four continents. "Patrick is refreshing because he isn't trying to be divine," says Mary Ann Wheaton, who runs Kelly's worldwide operations.
As much as any designer today, Kelly blurs the line between fashion and show biz. "I think of myself as a black male Lucille Ball," he says. "I like making people laugh." Indeed, can one imagine the reclusive Yves Saint Laurent skateboarding a la Kelly through Paris' seedier neighborhoods? Picture crusty Karl Lagerfeld nude from the waist up, posing for Vanity Fair, with red buttons over his nipples and 16 satin bows on his pigtails? Such antics have charmed the powerful French fashion press. "Le mignon petit noir Americain," enthused one Paris newspaper -- although in America being called a cute little black would seem more like an insult.
For Kelly, born and raised in Vicksburg, Miss., being an American black in Paris -- and reveling in it -- is a cachet that opens doors. His logo is a grinning golliwog. On promotion tours he startles fans by handing out 3-in. plastic black doll pins as mementos. His first Louvre show, a spoof on the Mona Lisa, included such numbers as "Jungle Lisa loves Tarzan" (decollete leopard-print gowns) and "Moona Lisa" (Plexiglas-bubble headgear and silver- star-studded dresses). At his second Louvre show, two weeks ago, the crowd shrieked and whistled its approval for such outfits as "Cowboys" (fringed jackets and pony-skin patterns) and "Blackamoors" (gold and silver turbans over satin cocktail suits). The invitation to the show featured a photo of Kelly naked but for a gilt loincloth. "He's very exotic to the French," says Nina Dausset, a former Elle editor. "He has his own folklore."