Perry Ellis

Perry Ellis is recalled through the fashion world around him: an advertisement discussed in the trade press, a show at which he appeared too ill to walk out, and news of his death weeks later. The diary offers no extended biography, but its brief entries preserve a sharp change in the way he was seen—from a name attached to fashion and advertising to the subject of anxious rumor and public mourning.

Fashion and the trade press

On May 6, 1986, a conversation about a Perry Ellis advertisement placed him within a dispute over fashion advertising and editorial control. The ad agency of Jerry Della Femina had made the ad, in which a boy model read a book bearing an obscenity. John Fairchild refused to run it in Women's Wear Daily, prompting Della Femina to challenge Fairchild’s authority to pressure people in the fashion business. Ellis is not described as taking part in the dispute; his name enters the diary as the label attached to the advertisement.

The fashion show and rumors of illness

Two days later, Wilfredo accompanied the diarist to a Perry Ellis show at 40th Street and Seventh Avenue. At its end, the room paused as Ellis was carried out. Some people were crying, and they said he had AIDS. The diary also records an earlier explanation circulating about his condition: that he was distressed and having a nervous breakdown because his boyfriend had died of AIDS. These accounts are presented as what people were saying, not as a confirmed diagnosis or medical explanation.

Death and the diary’s record

On June 1, the diary notes that Edmund Gaultney and Perry Ellis had both died during the preceding week. The entry gives no further circumstances of Ellis’s death and does not settle the rumors heard at the show. Read together, the May and June entries trace the rapid movement from speculation in a crowded fashion setting to a terse record of loss. Ellis’s presence in the diary remains brief, but the sequence shows how illness, bereavement, and uncertainty became part of the public talk surrounding him.