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Patrick Kelly came to town, via Vicksburg, Miss., Atlanta and New York City, for the first time in 1979. He promptly checked out the fashion shows, and has been in Paris ever since. "I can't say I wouldn't have made it in New York," he says, "because I didn't stay to find out." He introduced himself to the manager of a nightclub, who inquired how fast Kelly could sew. "I can make as many dresses as you want in one day," he replied, a boast that landed him a job making stage costumes in a tiny hotel room he shared with a 6-ft. 2-in. model named Kim and a single Singer. "Once I had an order for 300 dresses, and all I had was that sewing machine," Kelly remembers. "You can't make 300 dresses on a Singer like that. .I mean, it's for making curtains! But I used it and used it till it burned." Though a private client gave him a heavy-duty machine, Kelly's designs still have a jolly incendiary quality that can blow fuses. His clothes are fitted, funny and a little goofy. They have the spirit of sportswear designed with both a high-fashion sensibility and a sensitivity to price. "I'm the hero of people who just don't want to spend a lot of money on clothes," Kelly announces. "Today you can spend $500 for a sweater on sale. How logical is that? I'd rather spend $500 and get on a plane and go to Morocco and see something I've never seen before." Kelly, who covers his muscular frame with large overalls (size 56), favors "inexpensive clothes. But that doesn't mean cheap. It means affordable." (Dresses in his new collection range from $100 for one with a shirred bodice in polka dots and stripes to $200 for a frisky evening number.)
He can get away with a lot because he keeps the price right and the mood light. A characteristic Kelly tube dress, its top covered with buttons or with tiny versions of the black dolls he loves to collect, might seem cumbersome and campy coming from another hand. But, as turned out by this expatriate son of a Deep South home economics teacher, it assumes a happy, homemade quality that is entirely unforced. This may be one reason that models caught on to him early. The whirlwind runway star Pat Cleveland met Kelly in Atlanta in 1974, and "bought a lot of clothes from me. She would even pay me more than they were really worth." She encouraged him to go to New York City, where he scuffled through a variety of gofer gigs and worked part time at Baskin- Robbins. Kelly's color palette, indeed, can be reminiscent of some of the more arcane 31 flavors, just as even his most classical creations retain a streetwise patina. He calls himself a "froufrou kid," but he will toss a Frisbee during a free moment, and admits, "I like going skateboarding with the kids in Les Halles."
Still, Kelly works on a narrow margin. He has a staff of only six, laboring in four penumbral rooms near Les Halles, and the designer will sometimes whip up a meal for everybody "because their salaries aren't too good." He does some free-lance designing (for Benetton, among other companies) but is chary of discussing most matters of figures, whether financial (business doubles with each new collection, he says) or personal. "I'm too old to be a baby and too young to be an adult, but intelligent enough not to be a bad juvenile," he says. "I never tell my age because I hope I'll always be the new kid on the block."