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Woman's Ensemble: Scarf

Fall/Winter 1986
Patrick Kelly (American (active Paris), 1954–1990)
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, basing it on her famous banana costume and dance, originally performed at the Folies Bergère in 1925.

Object Details

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