# Buttons *A Biography of Patrick Kelly* — Legendary Biographies No. 014 - **Subject:** Patrick Kelly - **Written by:** Vivien Beauchamp - **Shelf:** Art & Design / Fashion - **Published:** 2026 - **Extent:** 176 pages, 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink - **Paperback:** $19.99 — 6 × 9 in · 176 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback - **EPUB:** $3.99 — EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books (ISBN 979-8-90623-054-6) - **Audiobook:** $5.99 — Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Rowan Hale (ISBN 979-8-90623-200-7) Buy it, or read the opening free: volumes/014-buttons.html ## About this book He was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on September 24, 1954, and grew up watching his grandmother iron the cocktail dresses of the Black women who came back from working in white households. He moved to Atlanta in 1974, dressed Iman for her first Atlanta runway in 1976, drove a Volkswagen Beetle to New York with $200, and arrived in Paris in 1979 with a one-way ticket bought by an Air France flight attendant named Pat Cleveland. In 1988 he became the first American admitted to the Chambre Syndicale du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode. He died of an AIDS-related illness on New Year's Day 1990 at thirty-five. Vivien Beauchamp's biography traces the arc through the Vicksburg grandmother's lessons, the Atlanta apprenticeship at Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, the New York Parsons rejection, the Paris arrival and the early Le Palace nights, the 1985 Patrick Kelly Paris debut, the watermelon and golliwog motifs that his white critics did not at first know how to read, the 1988 Vogue black-models cover, the Elle cover, the Chambre admission, and the bedside vigil of his partner Bjorn Amelan at the American Hospital of Paris in late 1989. What emerges is a portrait of a Mississippi-born fashion designer whose five Paris seasons remade what an American Black designer could be and whose death at thirty-five made the Brooklyn Museum's 2014 retrospective the recovery project it has continued to be. ## Contents 1. The Boy from Vicksburg 2. The Church Ladies 3. Jackson State 4. Atlanta Sketches 5. New York 1979 6. Bloomingdale's 7. Scraping By 8. Bette Davis 9. Paris Couches 10. The Elle Feature 11. The Chambre Syndicale 12. First Black Designer 13. Buttons, Dolls, Hearts 14. Reclamation 15. Joyful Provocation 16. The Brand 17. The Diagnosis 18. What Fashion Lost ## Questions **Who is Buttons about?** Patrick Kelly. The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case Buttons — and the name goes on the line underneath. **Is this an authorised biography?** No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented. **Can I read some of it before buying?** Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 4,965 words of the book. **How long is it?** About 60,500 words, 18 chapters, 176 pages in the paperback. **What is the printed book like?** 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf. ## The writer Vivien Beauchamp is a London-based culture writer whose biographies of women fashion designers and creative directors have been translated into nine languages. She spent a decade working in design archives and researching the social history of clothing before dedicating herself to full-time writing. Her published work includes the detailed industry histories Buttons and The East End Boy, alongside her acclaimed study of mid-century domestic aesthetics, The Fifth Helena Drive Bedroom. Her projects focus on the working lives of creative women and the material culture they left behind. She lives in North London, where she spends her weekends visiting local flea markets and restoring mid-century furniture.