Halston lived the American Dream – then fell victim to it. Born Roy Halston Frowick in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1932, Halston arrived in Chicago at the age of 20, opening a hat business the following year, with a clientele that included actresses such as Kim Novak, Gloria Swanson, and Deborah Kerr. In 1957, he began using the name Halston professionally and moved to New York, skyrocketing to fame when he designed the famous pillbox hat Jacqueline Kennedy wore to the 1961 Presidential inauguration.
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By the end of the decade, hats had fallen out of fashion but Halston continued his ascent, designing clothes and opening his first eponymous boutique on Madison Avenue in 1968. The following year Halston launched his first ready-to-wear line, adopting the chic minimalist silhouette that would become the hallmark of disco style. Celebrities including Bianca Jagger, Liza Minnelli, and Babe Paley flocked to Halston in droves, driving the worth of Halston’s line to $30 million. He sold his line in 1973, expanding to become a brand long before this kind of thing was done, stamping his name upon fragrance, luggage, menswear, and handbags, all while retaining creative control.
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The 1970s belonged to Halston as he defined decadence with a delicious blend of sex, glamour, and luxury. A fixture on the club scene, Halston brought the edge of night to the daytime world with “The Halstonettes,” a term fashion journalist André Leon Talley used to describe the jet-setting squad of supermodels who appeared together in Halston ads, editorials, and events including Pat Cleveland, Beverly Johnson, Angelica Huston, Karen Bjornson, and Alva Chinn.
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But like any mortal flying too close to the sun, Halston’s fall was harrowing. After signing a six-year, billion-dollar licensing deal with JC Penney in 1983 to produce Halston III, a line of affordable products starting at $24, high-end retailers retaliated, dropping his ready-to-wear line. That same year, Halston lost control over his namesake company and then, in 1984, he was banned from creating designs for Halston Enterprises. He barely made it through the decade, testing positive for HIV in 1988, before dying on 26 March 1990 at the age of 57.
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“Fashion is brutal,” says photographer Dustin Pittman, who knew Halston from the early 1970s. “People don’t realise the only designer still living from the American side at the Battle of Versailles is Stephen Burrows. That’s it. Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, Halston, and Anne Klein are all dead. Fashion goes up and down – a lot of designers go bankrupt.”
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In 1991, American journalist Stephen Gaines penned Simply Halston: The Untold Story, the biography that inspired Ryan Murphy’s new five-part Netflix biopic series about the designer’s life starring Ewan McGregor in the title role. In a statement released on 10 May 2021, Halston’s family derided the show as “an inaccurate, fictionalised account”, much in the same way the Versace family described Ryan Murphy’s 2018 American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace as a “work of fiction.”
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Invariably, myth looms larger than fact, becoming a through line that shapes the historical record. To provide balance, we speak to Halston’s friends, colleagues and associates to provide insight into the character of a man who was larger than life.
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