Fall/Winter 1986

Woman's Ensemble: Bra Top and Banana Skirt

In 1979 Patrick Kelly moved to France, which offered the gay Black artist a safe haven and creative freedom, much as it had nearly fifty years earlier for one of his muses, the bisexual icon Josephine Baker (1906–1975). Baker, a Black American expatriate and entertainer, dazzled Parisian audiences from 1925 to 1935. Kelly dedicated his Fall/Winter 1986–87 collection to Baker, and the American supermodel Pat Cleveland wore this ensemble on the runway, bringing down the house with her spirited interpretation of Baker’s famous banana dance, originally performed at the Folies Bergère in 1925.