Before Tom Ford, there was Halston, sharing the same model-like looks, penchant for black turtlenecks and black sunglasses, exquisite taste, flair for creating beautifully cut clothes that expertly walk the tightrope between sophisticated and sexy, and determination to pursue world domination through branding, slapping his name on everything from lingerie and perfume to luggage and bedding (though it’s now commonplace, Halston was the first high-end designer to pioneer such diversification).
But while Ford has maintained a steady grip on his business and personal life, Halston got sucked into the “divine decadence” of the ’70s, embracing a party-hearty lifestyle that led to him neglecting the day-to-day workload and resulted in his eventually losing control of his company and even the use of his name when his corporate backers’ patience became exhausted. Now, the designer’s glamorous, turbulent life is the subject of a five-part Netflix biopic that reunites the star (Ewa
Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the wider world.
Roy Halston Frowick didn’t take well to being alone. When he left his childhood home in Indiana, far from the mythical coasts, he dropped two of his names like last season s castoffs, adopted a chic mononym, and headed straight for more densely populated pastures: first Chicago, then New York City. It was in Manhattan that he reinvented himself as a fashion phenom and Studio 54 fixture, surrounded by a rotating Lazy Susan of beautiful people, speaking in a clipped, affected accent that became his signature. He didn t vertically climb the ranks of society so much as he horizontally insulated himself with people, including the model coterie that André Leon Talley christened “the Halstonettes.”
Halston with models in his designs. Photographed by Duane Michals,
Vogue, December 1972
“Ewan McGregor is Halston” announces the trailer for the buzzy docuseries about the American design legend debuting this week. It’s a statement that will be put to the test over the course of the show’s five episodes as Halston (né Roy Halston Frowick) was the most elusive of men, despite his fame.
The best description I’ve read of the designer comes from the pen of editor Patricia Bosworth, who found Halston’s “compelling presence” to be “openly sensual but at the same time remote.” Also telling is journalist Angela Taylor’s realization that the designer (who was born in Iowa and grew up in Indiana) was “as starstruck as any teenager eating popcorn at the Bijou movie in a Middle Western town.” What is generally overlooked is that Halston was as in awe of the technical talent of Charles James and the quiet luxury of Mainbocher, both American couturiers, as he was of
ATSUSHI NISHIJIMA/NETFLIX
Executive producer and director Daniel Minahan reveals every painstaking detail taken to ensure that the world of the iconic designer felt just right.
When Ewan McGregor met
Halston executive producer and director Daniel Minahan to discuss starring in the Netflix series, he was not familiar with the 1970s fashion revolutionary. To find out that he was so massively famous in his time, says McGregor, and I had never heard of him that didn t make much sense to me.”
McGregor was quickly brought up to speed, however, by Minahan, who had been trying to turn Halston s life into a project for nearly 20 years. A dedicated student of Halston, Minahan put together a presentation featuring images of the designer at every stage of his rise and fall.
This week, Jennifer Krasinski, editorial director of Artforum
digital, introduces Jack Pierson’s “People’s Parties: Billy Sullivan / Marcelo Krasilcic” from 1994’s summer issue. Pierson’s Silver Jackie, 1991, is not only the subject of David Rimanelli’s essay “Stages of Grief,” which appears in this month’s issue, but is also featured on the cover.
Once upon a time, before he was a celebrated artist, Jack Pierson was a wide-eyed newbie in New York with visions of the glitz the city would bequeath him. “
I would step out of the limo in Times Square, pausing to offer my arm to my companion Jerry Hall,” he fantasized. “