It is an indisputable fact that the fashion industry has its own aura, and many people say that there are too many people in it who are too pretentious, but when it comes to artificiality, there may really be no American designer who can win him, whether in life or in design, there are stories about him that are extremely dramatic.
Halston arrives at Marseille Airport in Provence, France, with Kay Thompson, Jane Holzer, and Liza Minnelli in 1973
He is the eponymous designer of the Halston brand, Roy Halston Frowick.
American designer Roy Halston Frowick
Although the brand named after him is difficult to find in the market, his legendary story of experience is always put on the screen again and again. If nothing else, the American designer, who disappeared among outsiders, was an absolute star designer in the 1970s, and together with Yves Saint Laurent laid the fashion of that era.
On Friday, by Ryan Murphy, a well-known screenwriter and producer who has produced many high-scoring dramas such as "Plastic Surgery Room" and "American Horror Story", Ewan McGregor played the protagonist, and the 5-episode limited drama "HALSTON" was released.
Stills from halston episodes
His talent is proportional to the index of fabrication
In the skit, Ryan presents an extremely dramatic Halston story, showing the dramatic changes in Halston's career in the 70s, the rapid development of the 80s, and the excessive gatherings that gradually disjoint him from the real world, which eventually led to his dismissal by his own design company in the mid-80s.
In addition to the high praise of the series itself, there was also a small episode before the official release of the film, when relatives of the late designer Hellston suddenly spoke out two days before the release, accusing the plot of the series of serious distortions, saying that the series was an "inaccurate, fictional description" of the designer himself and his life.
There are right and wrong, and how brilliant Halston's talent has been, how high the index of his special ability to do is. Roy Halston Frowick, or "Halston," as everyone might call it, was the undeniable icon of disco fashion throughout the 1970s. But his life was also accompanied by excessive consumption habits, a penchant for drugs, and an explosive love history.
In 1978, a corner of Halston's office
Halston has always been committed to allowing himself to be surrounded by beautiful people and things. Halston reportedly spends around $150,000 a year on orchids. At the height of his success, Halston moved his office to the 21st floor of the luxury Olympic Tower.
In this space with panoramic views of the Manhattan skyline, Halston's minimalist style is pushed to the apex, with each internal partition covered with mirrored glass that reflects infinitely back and forth from floor to ceiling.
As one of the most lavish headquarters a fashion company has ever had, this ultra-minimalist "glass box" is an astronomical amount of money both created and maintained. Excessive indulgence in such over-minimalism eventually reflected in his life.
Model Karen Bjornson walks the catwalk at the Olympic Tower in 1979
After his commercial success, generally fashion designers can directly label and sell their own brands, but Halston has always insisted on his own full control of the creative direction, refusing to entrust others, from cosmetics, shirts, suitcases are all designed by himself, which ensures the purity of design, but also makes him unable to complete the task before the deadline, which is commercially disastrous.
In 1982, Pat Cleveland presented a collection designed by Halston
The decline in business has also made Halston more and more difficult to get along with, and with the decline in his design and the emergence of a new generation of design power, Halston has become more and more obsolete later in his career, which has caused him to constantly compromise, fall from the elegance of the fashion world, and eventually lose everything – his name, his company and his life.
The "American Dream" grew
Some say that Roy Halston Frowick's own experience is a representation of the American dream, a very American growth process. Halston was born on April 23, 1932, to a humble family in the American Midwest. He has had a crush on hats since he was 7 years old and has begun to pursue beauty.
Before officially starting his career in fashion design, Halston had been specializing in women's hats, and although he was young, he already had quite a few loyal customers. In 1953, he also opened his own salon at the Ambassador Hotel in Chicago.
Five years later, by the age of 26, Halston was already a well-known women's hat designer and moved to New York to continue working for Lily Dache and the Bergdorf Goodman brand in the same capacity.
Former U.S. First Lady Jackie Kennedy wears Halston's custom women's hat
It wasn't until 1961 that a special guest pushed Halston's first career culmination. First Lady jackie Kennedy of the United States, who wore a custom pill box hat at the inauguration of the President of the United States, became famous in one fell swoop, halston's life changed, and he became the first superstar designer in the United States.
As the number of customers increased, Halston gradually expanded its business into more related areas. In 1966, he began adding haute couture and ready-to-wear collections to his company.
Halston's Spring 1971 Ready-to-Wear Collection
By 1970, he was working with Henry Pollack Inc. Halston International was formed to provide knitwear and accessories at a better price-performance ratio, and two years later opened more complete business lines. In 1973, Halston sold his business to Norton Simon Inc for about $11-12 million. The company subsequently changed its name to Halston Enterprises.
Halston's Spring 1973 collection backstage
From a business perspective, Halston was a pioneer in the fashion industry at the time, and the entire industry had never seen such a well-known designer before, nor had anyone ever known how to turn this prestige into a multi-million dollar business. Such a deal would be tempting for both parties, with Halston gaining wealth and the possibility of conquering a larger market; and Norton Simon was excited to add a shiny new member.
His designs are everywhere
Halston's designs were ubiquitous in the '70s and '80s, and both celebrities and the public wanted to have a dress he designed. Unlike the designers who have pursued huge silhouettes in the past, Halston's style is more like a gentle breeze, and in his design you can rarely see the large-scale decorative buttons, the stitching that protrudes on the open side, but more to let the texture of the fabric itself combine with the design to complete the modeling, assisting the wearer to bloom her most beautiful side.
Halston Spring 1977 ready-to-wear
Spring 1978 ready-to-wear
In addition to his best neck skirts, backless dresses, etc., he also tried to expand his dress products with more fabrics and styles, such as imitation suede. At that time, as a new material that had just been developed, imitation suede was designed into a shirt skirt by curious Halston with a try-on attitude, and it unexpectedly became a hit at the time after its release, and has always been a representative of American fashion design until now.
Halston Fall 1981 Haute Couture
He does use his unique design perspective to offer more options for changeable women – short dinner attire, festive attire, home at-home clothing, practical clothing adapted to different environments. His designs seem to have been favored by everyone: the athletes of the 1976 Olympics, countless movie stars, and the first lady of the United States.
Halston Fall 1973 Collection
"We have to take into account the wardrobe needs of every American, from fashionable young girls to leading the lifestyle of women across the company." Halston said in an interview. In the 1979 collection, he used his signature style of clothing in overalls, and the skirt with the asymmetrical collar was interpreted by him as an abstraction of the collar.
At the height of his career, Halston's designs were the fixed attire of the 1970s — the fixed attire of Lisa Minnelli, Anjelica Houston, and others — who, like designers, were regulars at the famous New York Studio54. The crazy lifestyle at the club also made him more and more crazy, with drugs, sex and false friends keeping his life in constant trouble and eventually leading to the downfall of his career.
The darling of the times is heading for a slippery slope
But just as every peak is followed by a trough, for Halston, the 1980s were a bit sad.
Halston collaborated with J.C.Penney on a series in 1983
As sales of Halston's custom and ready-to-wear collections gradually declined, in 1983 he signed a much-criticized mass-market partnership with J.C.Penney, but this disgusted supporters who had long bought the brand's luxury line such as Bergdorf Goodman, and Halston's design collection was gradually moved out of the mid-to-high-end store.
Halston at his desk in 1983
Losing all its brilliance and charm, and due to the over-partying and drug use that had a huge impact on his life, Halston was fired from his brand in 1984 by Norton Simon, losing the right to design under his own name. He spent the rest of his life trying to regain control of his brand, but ultimately failed. The brand changed hands several times among multiple buyers and was eventually snapped up by Revlon, and with Halston's death from complications from AIDS in 1990, The company also stopped continuing production of the clothing line, only keeping the perfume line continuing to produce.
In recent years, there have also been many companies that have tried to bring the brand back into Volkswagen's business, but several attempts have failed, and none of them have achieved the huge impact that Halston had in the 1970s. Looking back on Halston's short and wonderful life, he combines most of the qualities of an artist, persistence, unruliness, loneliness, kindness, and regard art above fame and even life, but the excessive pursuit of extremes in business has also led to this ending.