Halston with Elizabeth Taylor and Bianca Jagger at Studio 54
April 23, 1932- Roy Halston Frowick, or as I called him, Halston, was the iconic clothing designer of the 1970s & a friend to Jackie O, Bianca Jagger, Liza, Anjelica Huston, Lauren Bacall, Elizabeth Taylor, & of course, Andy Warhol, but he always managed to somehow ignore me at Studio 54.
A Midwesterner, he began his career as a milliner, eventually gaining enough recognition to be asked to design that pillbox hat Jacqueline Kennedy wore to the 1961 Presidential inauguration. Halston then moved to designing Haute Couture. Newsweek magazine named Halston “the premier fashion designer of the USA”. Halston was one of the first international fashion superstars & very possibly the most talented designer America has ever had.
He was the first American designer to perceive the potential of licensing himself & becoming a single name brand. The Halston influence went beyond style to reshape the business end of fashion. Through his licensing agreement with retailer JC Penney, his designs were accessible to ladies at most income levels & tastes. Although this practice is common today, it was a controversial move at the time & cost him some of those couture customers.
No American designer had such a strong impact on the re-defining of women’s clothing. Halston’s minimal style, use of luxurious materials such as cashmere & ultrasuede, & his thoroughly modern interpretation of classics, even his posse of models dubbed The Halstonettes, all defined the look of the 1970s.
Although he enjoyed enormous success in business & design, Halston liked to party, as we all did during those years, but his drug use deepened & a failure to meet deadline demands undermined his progress & profit. In 1984 he was fired from his own company & lost the right to design & sell clothes under his own name.
Halston was diagnosed with HIV in 1988. He left this world because of HIV related cancer in San Francisco, in the spring of 1990. Liza has never quite recovered.
Despite never having been invited to his table at Studio 54 (I found my coke from other generous party-goers), I do have a Halston connection. I wore a little red Halston number to Portland’s Red Dress Party in spring 2007. I looked super chic.
In the Sister Sledge disco tune He’s The Greatest Dancer, Halston is memorably mentioned in a description of a well-dressed man:
“Halston, Gucci, Fiorucci, he looks like a still, the man is dressed to kill’.
Halston has been mentioned in other songs, films & TV shows, usually as the criterion for a certain kind of cultured, cosmopolitan style. Check out the documentary Ultrasudue: The Search For Halston (2012). Watch.
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