Rated: M
Directed by: Frédéric Tcheng
Produced by: Frédéric Tcheng
Starring: Roy Halston Frowick, Liza Minnelli, Joel Schumacher, Elsa Peretti, Tavi Gevinson.
Jackie Kennedy was surrounded. Everyone else was dressed in fur when Jackie appeared in her cloth coat and iconic pill-box hat designed by Halston for JFK’s presidential inauguration in 1961.
‘That was a day that changed fashion in America.’
Throughout the 1970s Halston was possibly the America’s most influential designer, before mysteriously disappearing from view in the ’80s.
In an attempt to piece together the life of this quintessentially American designer, a lone researcher paws through the few remaining snippets and artefacts in a basement archive when the documentary opens.
As she sifts through the meagre remnants the researcher turns to the camera and says: ‘They bought his name, sold off his work for pennies on the dollar; they took his studio and erased 250 tapes’. At the same time she coyly refuses to reveal her own name.
For a country bent on taking over the world with Coca Cola and culture, this radical erasure of an artist from the cultural pantheon is tantamount to treason. What was it about Halston that could have elicited such a dire response?
As the nameless researcher asks, ‘Whatever happened to Halston?’
That is certainly one of the questions begging an answer about this boy from the Midwest who began his career as custom milliner to New York’s wealthy elite at Bergdorf Goodman.
Early on though, the question being asked was, ‘Was Halston at Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball?’ It was the event of the year for the rich the social and the beautiful, and Halston was not invited. Or was he? ‘He must have been there.’ Since it was a masked ball, no-one could be absolutely certain, but he definitely went to the ball in one sense: his masks and hats covered virtually every face and head of the attendees.
When he launched his own fashion label in 1968, Halston’s creations were designed to ‘honour the body’. Cut on the bias, the fabric moved and flowed and spiralled around the figure. Famed for cutting from a single piece of cloth, Halston’s patterns were not unlike abstract art, ‘Design reduced to its common denominators’. His elegant simplicity, an antidote to the exuberance of the ’60s.
All the society ladies were there for Halston’s first outing as a fashion designer, and before each model stepped onto the catwalk, he leant in and whispered: ‘Don’t forget, you’re the best.’
Almost overnight Halston was a sensation, but he loved to be controversial: from dressing Iman for her first runway event to staging a show as a happening, where the models sang and played guitar and clarinet.
That show was not so well received.
Fortunately Halston had other strategies.
Realising the boost that celebrities could give his name, he was the first to bring in movie stars, with Liza Minnelli enlisted for his overseas debut. With no time for rehearsals, ‘the event was directed more like a musical’. The Palace of Versailles was in uproar. ‘It was fashion in your face and it was modern.’ Halston’s name was on the international map.
‘Whatever happened to Halston?’ With his career captured in a rich cache archival footage, you will have your answer by the time the credits roll, but you may still find yourself asking: what is in a name?