Halston

I do not have a Netflix account (yet), but find myself glued to documentaries whenever I am able to take advantage of a friends. Most recently, glued (or should I say draped?) onto Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston.

It's the story of American Fashion Designer Roy Halston Frowick and how he revolutionized the industry during his quick rise to fame in the nineteen seventies and eighties. It seems to be that every film centered around the disco era shines with decadent excess and ends in dark despair - consequences from the excess in fashion, drugs and sex. Halston's life was no exception.

But, what I found most interesting about his career was that we rarely hear about it. Halston was as big as Chanel, at least the film implies so mentioning that his Z-14 cologne was as common a term as No.5, but I can honestly say it was the first time I've ever heard of Z-14. It may be generational, but I was definitely not around for the launch of No.5 either. Did you know that Halston was the first American fashion designer to achieve success as big as the famed European houses (where almost all great fashion still comes from today)?. He put America on the fashion map. His minimalistic approach to clothing blew peoples minds! It was so sought after that he even recalls seeing forty or more people at events in the exact same Halston design - that would never happen today. His style paved the way for designers like Diane von Furstenberg and Calvin Klein. He had billion dollar deals with JC Penney in the first collaboration in history that would offer people designer quality at affordable pricing. We live for those collaborations with H&M and Target today, and he opened the door for that entire concept.

When I think of Halston, I think of the simple dresses in Warhol prints that are part of the collections you only see at museum exhibits - a small niche in fashion. When the reality was that he had consumed the entire industry in his peak. And licensed himself to stretch beyond that with bedding, fragrances, and even indoor carpeting. He was huge! And lived a lifestyle that mimicked his success.

The lifestyle was the part of Halston I was most enamored with. The offices and home of Halston were all about excess. He had a spectacular office (below) on the twenty-first floor of the Olympic Tower in New York that was covered in mirror. Every wall a reflection of beauty with even the sliding doors covered in mirror. Mies Chairs and thousands of orchids for Pat Cleveland to dance around sat a top what was probably Halston indoor carpeting.

If his office was about flash, his home was more subdued. Or as subdued as Halston would allow. It was simply called "101", since it was at 101 E. 63rd Street, and was composed of low, simple, clean lines only interrupted by the organic qualities of nature in the green houses that anchored the space and terraces. In the ten thousand square feet of this townhouse built in 1967, there is a three story Living Room, four Bedrooms, four and a half Baths and plenty of entertaining space for the Studio 54 after party's.

I fell in love with the Sofa's (below, and no doubt custom) in the monochromatic Living Room. They are very low, simple and square, designed as a backdrop for the personalities that inhabited them. Even the color grey was chosen "to bring colors to life" when people sat on them. Brilliant!

The entire concept of the neutral backdrop to dinner party guests made me wonder if the allure of the seventies was really the glamorous people who lived then with the world as their backdrop. After all, Studio 54 was just an abandoned television studio and it was the lucky ones chosen to come inside who made it infamous.

Which is perhaps why the success of Halston is often overlooked or forgotten. Of course if you have an education in fashion you probably realize his significance and cultural impact, but for the mainstream without access to the archives, who is around to tell the story?

Including "In Search of" in the documentary title is entirely fitting. Most of what is left of his work seems to be boxed up at a school in Nashville and those who knew him are slowly disappearing. Without anyone around to reflect on his brilliant work, we are caught up in the salacious gossip and drug use that ultimately led to his demise. As the documentary mentioned though, you can't have a tragedy without brilliance in the beginning.

If you'd like to know more about Halston, check out the Ultrasuede documentary or stock your library with books on this fashion icon. Notably, the newly published "Halston: Inventing American Fashion".