Perry Ellis

Perry Ellis
Perry Ellis
	Perry Ellis Corporate Logo
Born	March 3, 1940; Portsmouth, Virginia
Died	May 30, 1986 (aged 46); New York, New York, U.S.
Nationality	American
Education	College of William and Mary ; New York University
Label	Perry Ellis
Awards	1979 -1984 Coty Awards (eight) ; 1983 Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) Fashion Award ; 2002 commemorative white bronze plaque

Perry Ellis (March 3, 1940 – May 30, 1986) was an American fashion designer who founded a sportswear house in the mid-1970s.

The Rise of Perry Ellis

Perry Edwin Ellis was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, on March 3, 1940, as the only child of Edwin and Winifred Rountree Ellis. His father owned a fuel company which enabled the family to live a comfortable middle-class life. Perry studied at the College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia, and graduated with a degree in business administration in 1961. He enlisted in the United States Coast Guard reserve to avoid the military draft and after six months he enrolled at New York University, from which he graduated with a master's degree in retailing in 1963.

He then 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. While there, he was co-founder of a Richmond retail shop A Sunny Day. He later joined the sportswear company John Meyer in New York. In the mid-1970s, eventually, he was approached by his then employer, The Vera Companies, famous for their polyester double-knit pantsuits, to design a fashion collection for them. Soon after that, Ellis presented his first women's sportswear line, called Portfolio, in November 1976. Although he could not sketch, 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.

Praised by critics as the ideal American sportswear designer of the time and loved by female consumers for his clean-cut yet casual style, Ellis, together with The Vera Companies' parent company, founded his own fashion house, Perry Ellis International, in 1978. He opened his showroom on New York's fashionable Seventh Avenue. As the company's chairman and head designer he later developed Perry Ellis Menswear Collection — widely successful, and marked by "non-traditional, modern classics". Step by step, he added shoes, accessories, furs and perfume that all bore his name. It became his trademark to skip down the runway at the end of his fashion shows.

Throughout the 1980s the company continued to expand and include various labels such as Perry Ellis Collection and Perry Ellis Portfolio. By 1982, the company had more than 75 staff. In 1984, Perry Ellis America was created in cooperation with Levi Strauss. In 1985, he revived his lesser-priced Portfolio line. In the early 1980s, wholesale revenues had figured at about $60 million. By 1986 that number had risen to about $250 million.

In early 1986, Robert L. McDonald, a former film producer and close friend of Ellis, succeeded Laughlin Barker, Ellis' domestic partner, who had died in January of that year as president of Perry Ellis International. After Ellis' not unexpected death in May 1986, McDonald announced that under the terms of Ellis' will he had full control of the company in trust for Ellis' heirs. "Perry wanted us to continue, of course", he then said of the fashion house's future. McDonald successfully guided the company through setbacks and challenges in the years to come. Recommended to McDonald by the fashion director of Bloomingdale's at that time, the young designer Marc Jacobs, a Parsons graduate who would start his own label in 1993 and become head designer of Louis Vuitton in Paris in 1997, designed for the house of Perry Ellis from 1988 to 1993.

Since then, the company has changed hands several times. In 1986, Manhattan Industries, the parent of The Vera Companies (the owner of Perry Ellis), was sold to Salant, a licensee of Perry Ellis. From then, Perry Ellis was acquired by Supreme Inc., a Miami-based textile concern, in 1999. Supreme was then renamed Perry Ellis International. In 2003, in turn, Perry Ellis International acquired Salant. The corporation has since then acquired various other textile companies, such as Original Penguin and golf brand Ping Collection, among many others. The company, eventually, was transformed to a complete licensing and marketing firm for the Perry Ellis name.

Private Life

In November 1984, Barbara Gallagher, a Hollywood screenwriter and long-time Ellis friend, gave birth to Ellis' daughter Tyler Alexandra Gallagher Ellis. Mother and daughter used to live in a house in Brentwood, California, that Ellis had bought. These days, the two live in Pacific Palisades and New York.

Perry Ellis fell seriously ill during the mid-1980s. Initially, it was not said what he was suffering from although he had been treated for hepatitis in a previous year. At the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) annual awards ceremony in January of 1986 he had to be accompanied to the podium by an aide to receive his award. On May 8 of that year, Ellis was not able to perform his traditional skip down the runway anymore and, looking shockingly gaunt and frail, had to be supported by two of his employees when he briefly appeared at the end of the runway. It was to be his last fashion show and he received standing ovations for it. Immediately after the show, he was admitted to New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center where he fell into a coma and died two weeks later of viral encephalitis, an AIDS-related disease, on May 30, 1986. A memorial was held at the New York Ethical Culture Society on June 12. Perry Ellis was dead at 46 and one of the first prominent American figures to succumb to AIDS.

Robert McDonald died of AIDS in 1990 at the age of 45.

Ellis' long-time partner Laughlin Barker since 1980, an attorney, became president and legal counsel for Perry Ellis International in 1981. Barker's health deteriorated seriously in the early 1980s and when he died on January 2, 1986, aged 37, it was said in a whisper that he had suffered from HIV and AIDS although officially only lung cancer was mentioned. "It's been a difficult time for me", said Ellis of Barker's death in 1986: "Laughlin was an extraordinary man, and I loved him. We worked together 24 hours a day, and he brought genius and humor to this business. We were together five years, and there was never an argument or a disagreement."

In 1987, the designer's restored town house at 37 West 70th Street in New York City was sold for $5.7 million - an incredibly high price at that time.

Corporate Information

As of March 1, 2007, Perry Ellis International operates 40 Perry Ellis retail outlet stores located primarily in upscale retail outlet malls across the United States, as well as five Original Penguin retail stores located in upscale demographic markets. In addition, the Company leverages its design, sourcing and logistics capability by offering a limited number of private label programs to retailers. It licenses its brands through 45 domestic and 94 international license agreements. The Company maintains a portfolio of 27 brands that it either owns or licenses.^[1]

The CEO of Perry Ellis International is George Feldenkreis. ^[2]

Perry Ellis International stock is traded at the NASDAQ (symbol: PERY).

Perry Ellis®

These days, Perry Ellis is the fifth largest men’s designer brand in the United States. With retail sales of over $1 billion, Perry Ellis clothing for men, women and boys is sold through major retailers and department stores in the US and Canada.

Hollywood actors Paul Rudd and Jerry O'Connell have been featured as models in the advertising campaigns for the Perry Ellis meanswear line. ^[3]

Perry Ellis provides the wardrobe for Alex Trebek on the TV Game Show Jeopardy!.

Designers

In early 2003, Public Clothing Company, a New York fashion manufacturer, acquired the license for women's sportswear from Perry Ellis and relaunched the label on the New York runways. Patrick Robinson, a Parsons graduate and former Giorgio Armani Le Collezioni and Anne Klein designer, was appointed Creative Director to produce a moderately priced collection for Public Clothing Company and a higher-priced collection for Perry Ellis International. His Spring 2005 collection was critically acclaimed and still, it was decided that the line be not produced for profitability reasons. A previous midscale line by Robinson had not sold well. Robinson disappointedly left his post in December 2004 for French fashion house Puig and was made creative director at Paco Rabanne in 2005. There is no high-end womenswear line currently being made at Perry Ellis. In 2003, Jerry Kaye became creative director for the high-end Perry Ellis Signature menswear line. The designer has worked with Perry Ellis for more than ten years. However, the men's Signature line was incorporated into the regular men's collection line with the Spring 2006 offering.

In the Fall of 2006, John Crocco took over the role of Creative Director. Since that time, Crocco has created 2 successful seasons of Perry Ellis runway Collections. John Crocco has made a huge effort to design the Collection as the late Perry Ellis would have- creating a wearable Collection consisting of "new classics". In the Spring 2007 runway show, John even paid homage to the designer in the final look through a tee shirt worn on model.

Fashion designers Isaac Mizrahi, Marc Jacobs and Tom Ford were all employees with Perry Ellis: Mizrahi apprenticed with the company from 1982 to 1984 and was best friends with Mr. Ellis. Jacobs joined Perry Ellis in 1988, created, among many other items, a Freudian (underwear) 'slip' imprinted with Freud's face and lost his design job again in 1993 over what came to be known as his 'grunge collection'. Ford briefly worked as design director for Perry Ellis womenswear under Marc Jacobs in 1988.

Awards

Perry 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 1983.
Perry Ellis also served as president of the CFDA.
In 1986, the annual Perry Ellis Award - these days known as Swarovski's Perry Ellis Award for Ready-to-Wear and Accessories - was created to honor emerging talents in the world of men's and women's fashion designers. The first designer to receive it in 1986 was David Cameron, the more recently Zac Posen in 2004, Trovata in 2006, and Derek Lam in 2005.
Also in 1986, during the CFDA awards at New York's Lincoln Center a Special Tribute was awarded to Perry Ellis who died that year.:)
In 2002, Ellis was honored with a commemorative white bronze plaque embedded into the sidewalk on New York's Seventh "Fashion" Avenue (east side sidewalk between 41st Street to 35th Street), the so-called Fashion Walk of Fame.

Notes

External links

Sources

[Reuters-1] Reuters

[George_Feldenkreis-2] George Feldenkreis

[O'Connell_ad-3] O'Connell ad

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