30 Facts About Perry Ellis

Perry Edwin Ellis was an American fashion designer who founded his eponymous sportswear house in the mid-1970s.

Perry Ellis was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, on March 3,1940, the only child of Edwin and Winifred Rountree Perry Ellis.

Perry Ellis's father owned a coal and home heating oil company, which enabled the family to live a comfortable middle-class life.

Perry Ellis graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1957.

Perry Ellis then studied at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and graduated with a degree in business administration in 1961.

Perry Ellis graduated from New York University with a master's degree in retailing in 1963.

Perry Ellis later joined the sportswear company John Meyer of Norwich in Manhattan.

In November 1976, Perry Ellis presented his first women's sportswear line, called Portfolio.

Perry Ellis was initially known for his versions of the oversized, unconstructed, layered, natural-fiber, mid-1970s Big Look or Soft Look that was the leading fashion trend of the time, for which he was compared favorably to Kenzo, the 1973 originator of the look.

Perry 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.

Perry Ellis would be known for his sweaters for the rest of his career.

Perry Ellis explicitly endorsed the trend for layering one set of shoulder pads on top of another, 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.

Perry Ellis's cropped pants, cropped sweaters, and dimpled sleeves of the end of the seventies were influential.

Perry Ellis continued to be known for the sweaters, cropped trousers, and silhouette experimentation that he had begun at the end of the seventies, including the flippy miniskirts that he and Norma Kamali introduced in 1979.

Perry Ellis was known for the very high quality of his fabrics, most of which he imported from Europe.

In 1980, Perry Ellis explored handmade knitwear, enlarged patterns, and enlarged Argyle and launched his first male collection.

Perry Ellis began that year to provide alternatives to the prominent shoulder-padding he became known for in 1978, adding width instead with capelet collars and top-of-sleeve tucks and pleats.

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.

Perry Ellis released his "Chariots of Fire" collection for spring of that year, continuing to show the longer lengths he had favored the previous fall, though never exclusively.

Perry Ellis reduced the rise of the previous year's high waistband somewhat for Spring of 1984, when he presented a collection intended to suggest an idyllic Australia, replete with his well-loved cropped trousers, cropped jackets, and focus on long skirts.

In 1984, Perry Ellis America was created in cooperation with Levi Strauss and he revived his lesser-priced Portfolio product line, filling it with the kind of soft, unlined, comfortable clothes he had shown in the mid-seventies, now updated with broader shoulders.

Perry Ellis's Fall 1984 collection for both men and women was an homage to artist Sonia Delaunay and focused on Ellis's trademark sweaters in Delaunay colors.

Perry Ellis was able to be modern and yet not come off antiseptic.

Perry Ellis served as president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America from 1984 to 1986.

In 1981, Perry Ellis began a relationship with attorney Laughlin Barker.

Perry Ellis bought a home for Gallagher and their daughter in Brentwood, Los Angeles, and would visit frequently.

In October 1985, rumors that Perry Ellis had contracted AIDS began to surface when he appeared on the runway at the end of his Fall fashion show.

Perry 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.

Perry Ellis was hospitalized soon after and slipped into a coma.

Perry Ellis died of viral encephalitis on May 30,1986.