AIDSEpidemic Tag

In her recent memoir, “Third Girl From the Left,” Christine Barker writes about interrupting her burgeoning showbiz profession as a dancer in “A Chorus Line” to take care of her older brother, Laughlin Barker, former president of Perry Ellis International, who was dying of AIDS. This was within the mid-Nineteen Eighties when there was a lot ignorance and stigma related to AIDS that neither Laughlin nor his business partner and lover Perry Ellis would disclose their illnesses. On the time, their failing health was shrouded in secrecy to guard their highly successful business, the staff and the brand, which had established itself on the forefront of American fashion for straightforward, understated dressing. Actually, in 1986, their obituaries attributed their deaths to...