Tyler’s LA mansion would make the perfect set ting for a movie
Tyler Ellis’s gorgeous French-style mansion in Brentwood, a stone’s throw from Bel Air, would make the perfect setting for a movie. And she wouldn’t need to look far for the plot – no further than her own life story, in fact. In this peaceful spot, surrounded by greenery, she tells us all about it.
Since hers is the name behind some of the most popular handbags on the red carpet – Princess Beatrice, Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé, Cate Blanchett and Selena Gomez are all fans – it’s no surprise to hear that Tyler’s background was creative. Her father was designer Perry Ellis, who put sportswear on the fashion map; her mother is TV screenwriter and producer Barbara Gallagher.
“My father was very advanced for his time and so was my mother. She was a writer on The Mar y Tyler Moore Show and produced Saturday Night Live.. She was and is an elegant and very interesting woman,” Tyler, 39, tells us.
Her parents may have had a lot in common, but they weren’t a couple. Back in 1984, when such arrangements were still rare, Tyler was born of their shared wish to have a child.
It was a mutual friend who introduced them. Perry, who was gay, told Barbara he wanted to be a father. Barbara, who was 39, told him she wanted to be a mother and that she didn’t have a partner, but was going to wait a couple of years to see if she could do it the traditional way.
As she was gorgeous and Perry liked her all-American look, he decided to see what happened. And after a while, they both decided that they’d found the ideal candidate in each other. They were right.
BATTLING ON
Tragically, just 18 months after the pair welcomed their daughter, Perry unexpectedly became very ill and died of what was diagnosed as an Aids-related illness. He was 46. Fortunately, Barbara rose admirably to the challenge of single parenthood.
“My mother decided to give me as normal a childhood as possible. She asked her parents to live with us for six months of the year so that I would have my grandfather Harold as a father figure,” Tyler says.
“She also kept me away from any kind of superficiality. For years, no one cared who my father was. If I was asked at school, I would answer with a vague: ‘Oh, he was a designer.’”
Of course, Perry Ellis was much more than that. Along with Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren, he was one of the big names of the late 1970s. When almost everyone
