PERRY ELLIS

FASHION DESIGNER

In addition to a canny sense of retailing, Ellis had talents that made him the equal of Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren among American designers of men's and women's sportswear.

Born in Virginia in the early 1940s, Perry Ellis grew up in Portsmouth and majored in business at the College of William and Mary. After receiving an M.A. in retailing from New York University and working in a Richmond department store, in 1967 he joined a sportswear company where he learned design and manufacturing. By 1976 he had set up his own company, of which he was chief designer. His first show made him famous with bulky jackets, oversize pants, natural colors, and knitted fabrics. Ellis called his style "the slouch look," and he soon branched out into men's sportswear, sheets, towels, shoes, and jeans.

Ellis was president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. With a woman friend he had a child, a daughter. On May 30, 1986, Ellis died in New York of viral encephalitis, a frequent complication of AIDS. The possible role of AIDS in his death was much debated, but executives of his firm (which is still in business) refused to comment. They maintained the fashion industry's strict code of silence on the private lives of its members, perhaps thinking that no woman would willingly wear a dress labelled with the name of a known gay designer. (See Rudi Gernreich, card 18). In Perry Ellis (1988) his biographer Jonathan Moor wrote that given the facts surrounding Ellis's death and the nature of his illness, there was no doubt in his mind that Ellis was "tragically struck down by this dreadful virus."

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