Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Perry Ellis" in English language version.
Perry Ellis's...short, hip-yoked, padded skirt, or farthingale...
In just one year, Perry Ellis has won a considerable reputation as a designer of casual clothes for the woman who, 10 years ago, might have lived in a commune. Today, she's grown up, but she prefers natural fibers, natural colors and clothes that look meant to be lived in.
Everybody he knows is casual about lifestyles, he says, very open and honest. 'I hope my clothes reflect the ease of life today...'
Perry Ellis...turned out some of the most extreme of the layered, piled-on 'big' looks...
His clothes have a totally relaxed look, exemplified by the tapered pants which he cuts too long so they bunch up over the ankles....Over [a] T‐shirt, he will place a cotton shirt, a hooded khaki sweater, and a quilted cotton coat...He likes sleeves rolled up and feels that two pairs of socks, one baggy, give the proper contrast to the flouncy [underskirts].
...[H]e uses linen, hopsacking and even hemp for his loose jackets, full skirts and big shirts in his collection for Portfolio. There's usually an underskirt in a blending natural tone, worn with the full skirt.
The big dress bloused up into a blouson bubble top. With a shawl thrown over one shoulder, it's an excellent example of the new big look. To layer it further, put a long‐sleeved cotton T‐shirt underneath...From Portfolio by Perry Ellis.
...[T]he Big Look...was pioneered in Paris a year ago by Kenzo Takada...with absurdly large skirts and coats....[T]he look features long skirts, dropped shoulders, dolman sleeves and large armholes, blouson jackets, blowing capes, and loose dresses–all laid on with layers of fabric.
'To me, Perry Ellis is Kenzo,' says one former Coty Award winner who preferred to be anonymous. 'The only difference is that Kenzo's clothes were too big and didn't fit well. Perry simply took Kenzo's ideas and made them work.' (Kenzo is, in fact, the only designer that Ellis says he admires.)
Last year [1977]..., Ellis was one of the major interpreters of the 'Slouch Look,' his own name for such designs as loose‐fitting, voluminous tops with raglan sleeves draped offhandedly over tapered pants cut too long so that they bunched at the ankles. He followed this with gutsy, oversized, bulky knit sweaters that hung down to mid‐thigh.
'I had seen that what was lacking in the women's market were hand-knit sweaters that actually looked hand-knit – bulky, flawed, raw.' So, with the help of only one assistant, he produced his first collection. Ellis's sweaters were short and sexy and, paired with crumpled-looking pants, received rave reviews from the press, which enthusiastically dubbed it The Slouch Look.
Koko Hashim, vice president of Neiman‐Marcus [says]...'There has been an enormous change in the silhouette, a broadening of the shoulders and narrowing of the hips — what we call the triangle... — that requires a reeducation of the consumer'.
Perry Ellis...this fall has produced the most extreme of the padded shoulders in America.
[A]nything and everything of Perry Ellis' breezy designs with exaggerated almost pillow‐padded shoulders has been a run‐away best seller in stores all over the country, with usually cautious store executives using words like 'fabulous' and 'unbelievable' to describe their success.
...[F]ashion buyers and the press returned home saying such things as 'Paris isn't real,' 'It's too costumey'...[M]any Paris designers are not in tune with the times, and have therefore abdicated their fashion leadership...
Now [fall 1978], there is his version of the triangle that incorporates a large range of natural tweeds, plush corduroys and hardy knits in rich, but neutral colors...
Mr. Ellis said he had no compunctions about adding padded coat to padded jacket to padded sweater.
Perry Ellis...has toned down those football shoulders he was doing so that his summer clothes have gathers where the sleeves are set in to create width without bulk.
Instead of last year's mammoth shoulder pads, there are folds at the top of sleeves that broaden the shoulders...It permits wearers to move in an un‐self‐conscious way.
...[T]he skirts are...full circles...[T]hey stop in the vicinity of the knees....[A]nother batch of skirts...bar[es] five inches or even more leg above the knee.
...Perry Ellis...has made a name for himself with baggy pants, mini sweaters and puffy down jackets.
...[T]he colors are mainly earthy hues.
His dimple-sleeve jackets, baby cable-knit sweaters and cropped pants, which looked so strange three years ago, have been copied by many of the smart manufacturers...
A whole industry of Perry Ellis adaptations has developed. Let him pinch a pleat at the top of a sweater sleeve and such pleats turn up everywhere. Let him cut a culotte with a certain fullness and Seventh Avenue is suddenly full of variations.
It is [Calvin] Klein, and other designers like Perry Ellis...and Ralph Lauren, who...have put the United States on an equal footing with the rest of the fashion world.
...[Perry Ellis] has been showing miniskirts....[T]hey have hip yokes and stiffening underneath the hips to puff them out at the sides like 18th-century panniers....[U]nder the pastel skirts, you'll see organdy petticoats.
...as playful as Perry Ellis's soft corset of last spring...
While ease is a basic component of the Ellis world of fashion, it is carried almost to its limits this season, what with those ballooning pants, the oversize Irish tweed blazers and the fullest, longest skirts the season is likely to produce. If that were not enough, he shows those voluminous skirts, sometimes two at a time, over the ballooning pants. The pants, as well as some of the skirts, just skim the tops of the high laced shoes...
The new fashion message from Perry Ellis is big and full. For his resort collection, he has designed the fullest pants anyone has seen in some time. A fuller silhouette can also be found in his new skirts.
For the complete Ellis look, the skirts are to be worn with tulle crinolines,...a cummerbund...
...Ellis...draws...inspiration from turn-of-the-century proportions, similar...to the clothes found in Chariots of Fire, which Mr. Ellis says he has not yet seen.
...[M]ost of the skirts were long, stopping below the calf....They are not only long but loose....Short skirts appear, also in white, and look crisp and starchy. They're full and flouncy and worn under matching tunics of eyelet-embroidered linen....The long, pleated skirts have the look of styles worn in the early part of this century for what passed for active sports...
Some said it was clearly a case of international knock-off, with...Perry Ellis adapting Thierry Mugler...[M]any of the clothes echo the Retro looks of 1978.
Perry Ellis's fitted jackets for fall...emphasized the waist and...caused a storm of outrage...
...[I]t is to be hoped that some of his experiments this season will not pass into the common domain. His peplum suits with tight waists and tighter skirts are one example. Even lovely fabrics can't redeem them. His short, tight jackets with vestigial tails, derived from men's formal clothes, are another. The little triangles of fabric descending from the waist in back are simply silly.
...[B]rief flyaway jackets [were] shown with high-rise skirts almost long enough to touch the shoe tops....The skirts were fitted snugly through the waist and hips with tucks released to create a swirl of fullness toward the hem. The jacket hems created a balancing ripple above the waist.
...[I]t was not necessary to worry about whether the linen suits with the long, slender skirts and the flyaway short jackets actually represented what was worn on Whitsunday in Sydney, Australia, as the program said. The flyaway jackets have been shown before. Mr. Ellis has perfected the cut, reduced the size of the waistbands of the skirts, pants or culottes with which they are worn and made them eminently wearable.
This week [Perry Ellis Portfolio] was revived...with prices 30 to 50 percent lower than the major collection...Economies are achieved by using machine-made instead of hand-knitted sweaters, eliminating linings (Mr. Ellis says he personally prefers unlined clothes) and using wool instead of cashmere....The clothes have the relaxed, natural look of Mr. Ellis's first collection in the 1970's. Trousers are important. Colors are muted. Skirts are long and legs are clad in dark, thick stockings above low-heel shoes. Tops tend to be belted at the hips, and shoulders are broad.
Perry Ellis dedicated a large portion of his collection to Sonia Delaunay...
His new collection of clothes for hot weather is spare, stripped of all gewgaws and extraneous decoration....In knitted fabrics that cling to the body, some are as revealing as swimsuits....[H]e has made jackets that fasten on the chest and then open through the middle, shorts to be worn with matching bras or shirts and dresses that bare the knees...Minis are one of his enthusiasms...
Perry Ellis gave the fashion crowd a jolt with an uncharacteristically close-fitting men's and women's collection shown with sizzle by such models as athletic Jeff Aquilon, lithe Lise Ryall, Elle Macpherson, who is so fit she seemed to leap out of everything she wore...
...[H]e now does sleeker clothes that occasionally bare a midiff....There are pleasant prints adapted, Mr. Ellis says, from his collection of Chinese export porcelains.
Among the 500 or so who clambered up the bleacher seats that lined [Ellis's] showroom on Seventh Avenue were Lauren Hutton and Cheryl Tiegs, the actress Anne Baxter and Sonia Rykiel, the French designer, who found his clothes 'so young and so original.' Mr. Ellis has achieved such stature that the presidents of Bloomingdale's, Bonwit Teller, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman and Henri Bendel feel it is necessary to make the trek to Seventh Avenue to see and be seen as well as to check out the trends.
Perry Ellis...is a master sweater designer...
...[M]any [buyers] had trouble selling exaggerated shoulders...'I can't see women getting into cars with shoulders so broad,' said Wendall Ward, vice president of Garfinckel's...At one point during the five-day marathon of fall ready-to-wear shows, Robert Sakowitz, president of Sakowitz (Houston), asked Val Cook of Saks-Jandel, 'Do you know a good book store in Paris?...I want to buy a stack of Bibles,' he explained. 'I think we will all need to do a lot of praying to sell these clothes'.
Ellis's...bright-colored sweaters (his biggest sellers)...Ellis's special talent is sweaters...
Ellis...could pay the rent with his cropped pants alone...
Ellis has...had great success with his midcalf-length full pants that bridge skirts and pants.
...Ellis is busy fiddling with the shape of clothes...
Most of Ellis's fabrics are from Europe, where they are dyed in the yarn and then woven rather than printed in massive quantities here. The difference is the richness of color and quality of fabric, said Ellis, who may be the biggest user of European fabric in America.
Ellis is on a fabric binge that has taken him to Ireland for Donegal tweeds, England for his heathery plaids and France and Italy for his paisleys and duck-print challis...
Ellis's specialty is handknit sweaters...
'I wanted to take the padding out of the shoulder, but I felt it needed something at the top to replace it,' [Perry Ellis] explained. '[Capelet collars] were the answer'.
He has stashed away his old signature – padded shoulders...[H]e now has...width coming only from the rounded shape of the sleeve...
He controls the silhouette with...laced-up corsets...
Perry Ellis...showed...skirts that are padded below the waist at the hip....Ellis calls them 'farthingales'...Ellis...has shaped his linen farthingales with a wad of organdy....[Y]ou can wear them with padding and when you want to change, just take out the padding.
Shape comes as well from the new stiffer fabrics, like faille and cotton twill.
Ellis's clothes...are in sync with those of many of the Europeans, who have tilted to fuller, looser, layered looks for fall, along with many more pants shapes....First came the ankle-length Zouaves,...worn under two layers of fitted, belted coats with full skirts, Russian peasant hats with tassels and ankle-high boots.
...[A] few designers, including Perry Ellis, continue an emphasis on longer lengths. Ellis, whose longer lengths have sold well this fall, is not about to give them up, though he did show plenty of short skirts.
Perry Ellis...thinks some of his customers are ready to gussie up a bit, too. For them he has done nipped waistline peplum suits, with knee-length skinny skirts, and high-heeled pumps, a look with origins in the 1950s. He calls these his 'glamor suits'...
...Ellis uses one huge bloom, often a carnation or a rose, carefully spaced on silk. His patterned sweaters, inspired by playing cards, are of a tunic shape, while other sweaters are the leanest and longest in town...
