The career and legacy of Black fashion designer Patrick Kelly (1954–1990) is celebrated at deYoung museum in San Francisco. Patrick Kelly was born in Mississippi in 1954. Kelly learned sewing at a tender age, possibly through the help of his mother, who worked as a teacher, teaching home economics. Immediately after he graduated, Kelly moved to Atlanta, where he was employed in a thrift shop, which exposed him to a broad range of vintage designer clothes, which he would later modify into new, unique designs.

Patrick Kelly’s design career took a significant turning point after he moved to Paris in 1980. He got a chance to pursue his love for being a designer and exhibit his outstanding talent as a designer. With the help of his friend, photographer Bjorn Ameslan, Kelly established the Patrick Kelly Paris company in 1985.

1988 saw Kelly become the first-ever American to earn admission to the renowned Chambre du prêt-à-porter des couturiers et des creatures de mode, where he ascended the status of a ‘creature .’The African American culture highly informed his designs.

The San Francisco exhibition’s sections and themes include the “Runway of Love,” highlighting the designer’s heart-shaped embellishments to his clothing, often composed from his signature buttons. As a child growing up in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Kelly would often lose his buttons, which his grandmother replaced with those of many different colors, a look that Kelly later adapted for his fashion designs.

”Fast Fashion” includes designs that Patrick Kelly assembled quickly to sell on the streets of Paris after he moved there in 1979. He dressed his model friends in body-conscious knits, which they would wear around the city, becoming living advertisements of his vision. These dresses quickly caught the attention of an editor at French Elle magazine, which featured Kelly’s fashions in a six-page spread in February 1985, as well as the Paris boutique Victoire. His first collection was purchased by Bergdorf Goodman, who found Kelly’s designs fun, chic, affordable, and Parisian. The New York–based department store showcased them in a window display reserved for new designers

Kelly often incorporated humor to address serious issues in his designs, especially those pertinent to racism.

Unfortunately, Kelly succumbed to AIDS in 1990, aged thirty-five, and after having produced ten collections, which included a collaboration with Benetton.