PERRY ELLIS: A Biography

by Jonathan Moor ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 1988

The life and early death of renowned, multimillionaire fashion designer Perry Ellis is told in a biography that has much of the trim Élan of one of Ellis' own men's designs. Ellis himself never actually sketched one of his own revolutionary fashion designs. He handled the details and fabrics and had encyclopedic knowledge of fashion wear. As a very young, well-brought-up child from a comfortable Virginia family, he learned from his mother on shopping trips just what was comme it faut. Oddly enough, when his meteor was rising he wore antifashionable duds himself and held much of the milieu he worked in contempt. There was always the private Perry, even when he became ""Mr. Pop,"" who would not surrender to fashion. His schooling prepared him only for a business career, not the fine arts. He was not an intellectual and began as a buyer for a Virginia department store, then moved on to second-level merchandisers John Meyer and Vera, to whom he brought real class. Even so, Ellis was eager to branch out into a personal line and so got Manhattan Industries to back him. Ellis' big breakthrough came early: he saw a delivery boy in a long jacket, bought it off the boy's back and from it developed the ""Slouch"" look, which took off phenomenally. Ellis was a bisexual, never a campy gay. After an affair with a hedonistic California college student much younger than himself, he fell in love with Laughlin Barker, a tremendously handsome and cultured married man with a daughter; their affair lasted until Barker died six years later of AIDS, as did Ellis shortly thereafter. A year before he died, he fathered a daughter himself, though it may well have been artificially. Vastly detailed about the fashion industry, this presents a Perry Ellis of considerable charm and no great depth. Custom-tailored.

Pub Date: June 16, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1988

Categories: NONFICTION