Now playing: 'Halston' documents rise and fall of America's breakthrough fashion designer

Roy Halston Frowick revolutionized women's wear, but his greatest invention was himself: "Halston is really a self-creation"

Frédéric Tcheng's last documentary, Dior and I, centered on the insular world of Paris fashion and the venerable House of Dior. But his attention shifts to the other side of the Atlantic for his latest film, on the late American designer known simply as Halston. 

Halston, now playing in Los Angeles (Nuart Theatre) after opening in New York last week, explores a man who took American fashion in innovative new directions, putting it on par with the grand European traditions.

"The thing that holds my interest always is MORE--what’s next, what’s going to be the next exciting thing," Halston once said. "I don’t quite know where I got my ambition but I have it."

Halston...designed clothes that had no structure, that didn't go with the idea of couture, sort of corseted fashion. And that was the breakthrough.

--Frédéric Tcheng, director of Halston

Roy Halston Frowick (1932-1990) was born far from the epicenter of fashion, in Des Moines, Iowa. He spent part of his youth in Indiana, worked for a time in Chicago, then migrated to New York, becoming a hat maker at the tony department store Bergdorf Goodman.

Word of his millinery skill quickly spread (this was a time where most women and men wore hats in public) and when it came time for the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, Halston was tapped to design a chapeau for the incoming First Lady, Jackie Kennedy. He created an unforgettable pillbox design. 

"It completely launched his career. He became like a household name, basically," Tcheng tells Nonfictionfilm.com. "She was such a style icon and famous for this big hairdo so he decided to put a hat like on the back of the head."

As the 1960s progressed he left Bergdorf to launch his own company designing women's wear.

"That was a very actually powerful transition...Hat making is all about creating this very rigid structure and putting fabric on it," Tcheng observes. "Halston did a complete 180 and designed clothes that had no structure, that didn't go with the idea of couture, sort of corseted fashion. And that was the breakthrough and the complete shift of paradigm that I think he doesn't get enough credit for."

The secret to the easy elegance of Halston's designs was cutting the fabric on the bias, allowing it to drape on a woman's body in a carefree style. 

"Before I went into filmmaking I studied engineering so it's fascinating for me to look at the design, the actual patterns and the diagrams of how the clothes were constructed," the director notes. "Models were telling us things like he would just cut pieces of fabric on the floor and then put it on them and then it was a dress. I was like, 'How is that possible?'"

Halston with Liza Minnelli, an early client and friend.

Celebrity clients flocked to him, including Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Bacall, a young Anjelica Huston, Bianca Jagger and Liza Minnelli (the latter two women would become great Halston pals). Any trace of his Midwestern upbringing was long gone by that time. Halston became a fixture of the smart set--slender and regal, with an accent reminiscent of Cary Grant.

"Halston is really a self-creation, he's like a self-invention," notes Tcheng. "He inspired a whole range of people from like Lady Gaga to Madonna to invent themselves, come to New York and become someone else...He was not exactly a snob, but he had this very powerful idea of who he wanted to be and what he wanted to do in life and he just made it happen."

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related: 
Frédéric Tcheng on Dior and I: What happens when an outsider takes creative control of a quintessential French fashion brand

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In 1973 Halston made the fateful decision to sell his company to Norton Simon, while remaining creative director of his line. 

"He saw that as a way to have a major financial backing and being able to achieve what he really wanted, like putting out a perfume, licensing his name, becoming a real brand," Tcheng comments. "He had an incredible run with Norton Simon for 10 years. It's really only when Norton Simon gets sold through like a corporate takeover that things get sour."

That corporate takeover brought Halston under the thumb of Esmark, a conglomerate that owned Playtex, Danskin and other brands. A hard-nosed executive was put in charge of managing the exacting designer.

"Esmark didn't necessarily want Halston," points out Roland Ballester, producer of the documentary. "He just came along with the other [Norton Simon divisions] Esmark was interested in. So to them, it was, 'We don't even care about your line of business. We don't even want your business. But yet we have to deal with you and all of the issues that come up in a very dramatic way.'"

A model in a Halston design.

Halston in the space that would become his New York headquarters.

Not long before the Esmark takeover, Halston made a bold maneuver with equally longterm repercussions for him. He reached a lucrative deal with mass market retailer JC Penney to sell a line of Halston clothes and accessories. "I want to dress all of America," Halston proclaimed. But his peers in high fashion viewed the JC Penney alliance as heretical.

"The fashion world took it as a grave offense," Ballester states. "It wasn't just, 'Okay, we're going to slowly ease you out because you've changed direction.' It was this very dramatic, 'We're done with you.'"

Bergdorf Goodman dropped Halston immediately, pulling his clothes and perfume.

"It was kind of a snowball effect," says Tcheng. "It's hard for us to imagine in hindsight how radical [the JC Penney deal] was because now everyone's doing it. Uniqlo, H&M, they all have their designer collaborations. But back in '82 it was unheard of. It was a good idea. We see that play out now but it just was too soon and a lot of people in the fashion world just never forgave him."

Halston and close friend Liza Minnelli. Photo courtesy 1091

One person who never abandoned Halston was Minnelli. The filmmakers interviewed the Oscar-winning actress and singer about her friend. She had known the designer in good times and bad--the bad having to do with the Esmark debacle and Halston's increasing use of drugs. But she would not speak ill of him in any way.

"Very hard to do an interview about your best friend," Liza says in Halston, "especially for what's popular...is digging a little. I don't like it. I hated it when they did it to my mother or my father or myself. And I won't do it to Halston, I just won't." With a theatrical flourish and a wink, she added, "I refuse!" 

"She really wanted to honor him," Ballester observes. "It's just such a genuinely beautiful friendship that they had and he meant so much to her. Still does."
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In the late 1970s Minnelli and Halston were fixtures at Studio 54, a haven of drugs, sex and disco. Some trace Halston's decline to that era.

"A lot of people talk about Studio 54 as the moment when things shifted, but it's hard for me to pinpoint exactly what brought him down. It's like a confluence of so many different factors," Tcheng counters. "But Studio 54, you have to imagine that he was on top of the world. He was finally creating a society where he felt comfortable and included. It was inclusive, it was gay, it was people of color, it was disco, it was New York and he was finally part of the people sort of creating that culture."  

Tcheng adds, "Unfortunately, every utopia has an expiration date and it went a little too far. [Halston] was such a force of nature that he always thought that he was under control. But with substance abuse I think it's always a kind of mistake people do, like you can handle it... It's interesting to imagine what would have happened if he had gone to rehab at some point."

Director Frédéric Tcheng (left) and producer Roland Ballester at the Nuart Theatre in West Los Angeles, after a showing of their film "Halston." Saturday, June 1, 2019. Photo by Matt Carey

Halston's last years were consumed in the battle with Esmark.

"They tried to take the company away from him and he's very tenacious and he fought back," Tcheng notes. "They didn't know that they had such a worthy opponent who was going to raise hell before he left. And he did."
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In the late 1980s Halston was diagnosed as HIV-positive and he succumbed to AIDS-related complications in 1990. He was 57. 

"He didn't think of himself as an artist, even, internally. He never talked about his work in that sense," the director says. "At the end, he said very humbly before he died, 'I'm just a dress maker. That's what I do.' There's something really refreshing about that." 

The marquee of the Nuart Theatre in West Los Angeles, where "Halston" is now playing. Saturday, June 1, 2019. Photo by Matt Carey