In the grand narrative of American style, Perry Ellis wrote a chapter that belonged only to him. Far from the clichés of utilitarian sportswear, he infused it with a charm that was at once classic and free, a playful modernity, never without a touch of gentle irony.
“There are few clothes that have never been made. It’s the little extras that make them unique,” he confided in 1976. Those “little extras” were precisely his signature: a shirt that seemed conventional but was cut slightly oversized; a sweater with rustic undertones, yet reimagined with the elegance of an Ivy League student on holiday in the countryside.