Perry Ellis

Ellis was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, on March 3, 1940, the only child of Edwin and Winifred Rountree Ellis. His father owned a coal and home heating oil company, which enabled the family to live a comfortable middle-class life. Ellis graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1957. He then studied at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and graduated with a degree in business administration in 1961. To avoid the draft, Ellis enlisted in the United States Coast Guard Reserve with service that included six months of active duty with the Coast Guard.[2][3][4] He graduated from New York University with a master's degree in retailing in 1963.[5]

Ellis started out in department store retailing in the Richmond, Virginia, area to gain experience in the fashion industry as a buyer and merchandiser at the department store Miller & Rhoads.[6] While there, he was co-founder of Richmond retail shop A Sunny Day. He later joined the sportswear company John Meyer of Norwich in Manhattan.

In the mid-1970s, he was approached by his then employer, The Vera Companies, famous for their polyester double-knit pantsuits, to design a fashion collection for them. In November 1976, Ellis presented his first women's sportswear line, called Portfolio. Although he was not a skilled sketcher, he knew exactly how the industry worked and proved a master of innovative ideas who created "new classics" that American women longed for at the time.[7][8] He was initially known for his versions of the oversized, unconstructed, layered, natural-fiber, mid-1970s Big Look or Soft Look[9][10][11] that was the leading fashion trend of the time,[12][13][14][15] for which he was compared favorably to Kenzo, the 1973 originator of the look.[16] Ellis enhanced this trend by creating substantial, hand-knit-looking sweaters in rough-hewn textures that combined well with the earthtones and loose shapes of the period.[17][18]

Together with The Vera Companies' parent company, Manhattan Industries, he founded his own fashion house, Perry Ellis International, in 1978, opening his showroom on New York's Seventh Avenue. That same year, he interpreted the new big shoulders of the fall[19][20] in a way that proved more popular with the US public[21] than the extreme forties-revival looks emanating from Europe,[22][23][24][25] adding large but soft shoulder pads to his familiar earthy textures[26] in new, slimmed down, but still casual shapes. He can also be credited in this fall 1978 collection with introducing the trend for layering one set of shoulder pads on top of another,[27] which would become common in the 1980s, as would the flounced miniskirts, called rah-rah skirts in the UK, that he and Norma Kamali introduced the following year.[28][29] His cropped pants, cropped sweaters, and dimpled sleeves of the end of the seventies were also influential.[30][31]

As the company's chairman and head designer he later developed Perry Ellis Menswear Collection – marked by "non-traditional, modern classics." Step by step, he added shoes, accessories, furs and perfume that all bear his name.

In 1980 Ellis explored handmade knitwear, enlarged patterns and enlarged Argyle and launched his first male collection. Throughout the 1980s the company continued to expand and include various labels such as Perry Ellis Collection and Perry Ellis Portfolio. In 1982, Perry Ellis won the Council of Fashion Designers of America's Designer of the year award, at a time when his company had more than 75 staff. That year, he also released his 1982 spring collection "Chariots of Fire."[32] For his fall 1982 collection, he tried his hand at some of the highly tailored suit styles that had dominated fashion since 1978, to a cooler-than-usual critical reception.[33]

In 1984, Perry Ellis America was created in cooperation with Levi Strauss. His fall collection that year for both men and women was an homage to artist Sonia Delaunay and focused on Ellis's trademark sweaters in Delaunay colors.[34][35] In 1985, he revived his lesser-priced Portfolio product line. In the early 1980s, wholesale revenues had figured at about $60 million. By 1986 that number had risen to about $260 million.[36]

Highly praised professionally and personally,[37] Ellis believed that "fashion dies when you take it too seriously."[6] Of Perry Ellis' fashion design, Michael Bastian remarked that "no one did it better...He was able to be modern and yet not come off antiseptic." New York Times fashion columnist Bernadine Morris praised Ellis's tweeds and sweaters as "comfortable and forever-looking," with the "insouciant feeling of a college woman slipping into her boyfriend's jacket that is a size or so too big for her, or putting together a jacket and a pair of pants in patterns that don't quite match, but look quite appealing,"[38] while Steven Kolb, CEO of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, described Ellis' fashion as "my way to step forward in fashion, but to still have a comfort level. It helped define my personality."

Ellis served as president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) from 1984 to 1986.

In 1981, Ellis began a relationship with attorney Laughlin Barker.[39] Later that year, Ellis appointed Barker the President of the licensing division of Perry Ellis International. They remained together until Barker's death in January 1986.[40]

In February 1984, Ellis and his long-time friend, television producer and writer Barbara Gallagher, conceived a child together via artificial insemination. Their daughter, Tyler Alexandra Gallagher Ellis, was born in November 1984. Ellis bought a home for Gallagher and their daughter in Brentwood, Los Angeles, and would visit frequently. In 2011, Tyler released her first line of handbags using the name Tyler Alexandra.[41]

In October 1985, rumors that Ellis had contracted AIDS began to surface when he appeared on the runway at the end of his Fall fashion show. By that time, Ellis had lost a considerable amount of weight and looked much older. Around the same time, Ellis' partner Laughlin Barker was undergoing chemotherapy for Kaposi's sarcoma, an AIDS-related cancer that later metastasized to his lungs. Ellis continued to deny that he was sick, but rumors of his illness persisted after he passed out in the receiving line at a party at the Costume Institute in December 1985.[42] On January 2, 1986, Barker died of lung cancer at the couple's home in Manhattan.[40] After Barker's death, Ellis' health rapidly declined. By May 1986, Ellis had contracted viral encephalitis which caused paralysis on one side of his face. Despite his appearance, he insisted on appearing at his Fall fashion show held in New York City on May 8. At the end of the show, Ellis attempted to walk the runway for his final bow but was so weak, he had to be supported by two assistants. It was his final public appearance. Ellis was hospitalized soon after and slipped into a coma.[43] He died of viral encephalitis on May 30, 1986.[5] A spokesperson for Ellis' company would not comment on whether the designer's death was AIDS-related stating, "Those were Perry's wishes."[44]

Most newspapers omitted the AIDS rumors from Ellis' obituary and simply attributed his death to encephalitis. In August 1986, New York magazine writer Patricia Morrisroe wrote a story about Ellis where she concluded that, "...many people believe Ellis had AIDS, and given the evidence, it seems likely."[45] A 1993 article from the Associated Press included Ellis among its list of better known AIDS victims.[46]

Steven Kolb defined Perry Ellis legacy with the following words: "In terms of men's fashion, he was the first to bring the idea of dressing up in a casual way to the American man". In 1986, the annual Perry Ellis Award—now known as the Swarovski Emerging Talent Award—was created to honor emerging talents in the world of men's and women's fashion designers. The first designer to receive it was David Cameron.[47]

Though he worked as a designer for less than a decade, over 25 years after his death his work is "still seen as incredibly influential."[1]

In 1999, Miami-based textile company Supreme International purchased the Perry Ellis brand from Salant, a licensee of Perry Ellis that acquired it from Manhattan Industries in 1986. Supreme renamed itself Perry Ellis International and the company became traded on the NASDAQ under PERY. Perry Ellis International also owns and licenses other notable fashion brands, such as Original Penguin by Munsingwear, Cubavera, C&C California, Rafaella, Laundry by Shelli Segal, Ben Hogan, Jantzen, Nike Swim and Callaway, among others.

In the twenty-first century, the Perry Ellis brand has continued to expand. Building upon styles set forth by Ellis, the brand has successfully continued to expand, collaborate with other designers, such as Duckie Brown, and hold critical acclaim.

• Ellis won eight Coty Awards between 1979 and 1984, the last year that they were given.
• He was presented with the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) Fashion Award in 1981.
• During the CFDA awards at New York's Lincoln Center in 1986, Ellis was posthumously awarded a Special Tribute.
• In 2002, Ellis was honored with a commemorative white bronze plaque embedded into the sidewalk on Seventh Avenue in New York in the so-called Fashion Walk of Fame located on the part of Seventh Avenue called "Fashion Avenue."

• Perry Ellis (brand)
• Perry Ellis International
• Fashion in the United States

• Banks, Jeffrey; Lennard, Erica; de la Chapelle, Doria (2013). Perry Ellis : an American original. Rizzoli. ISBN 978-0847840700.
• Moor, Jonathan (1988). Perry Ellis: a Biography (1st ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312014899.

• Official site
• Perry Ellis International