The heavily saturated and enchanting appeal and demise of fashion designer Roy Halston Frowick is revealed in Frédéric Tcheng’s Halston (2019). The iconic designer and entrepreneur began his career as a milliner for Bergdorf Goodman in the 1950s, where his emergence into the exclusive high fashion collective was sparked in his design of the pillbox hat, worn by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy at the presidential inauguration of 1961. Upon venturing into the realm of designer fashions, Halston ingeniously created structured yet kinetic silhouettes which were radically cut along the bias, rendering labyrinthine form for the liberated 1970s American woman. His rise to prominence is heavily romanticised within the film, where energetically saturated footage of his radiant glory, self-promotion, prolific enterprise and lustrous reputation are present.
Tcheng manages to creatively integrate a fictitious and heavily stylised archival worker (Tavi Gevinson) to bring a sense of intrigue and structure to the plethora of interview and documentary footage, largely comprised of 1970s and 80s film and fairly contemporary interviews including of the likes of Liza Minelli, Joel Schumacher, Elsa Peretti and a selection of Halston’s gloriously stylish entourage, The Halstonettes, all of which manage to reveal aspects of the alluring charm, successes, and struggles of being involved in such a collective.
Sparkling, evocative and exciting footage of Halston’s social life and early economic enterprises are equally balanced with the difficulties he faced in the latter half of his career. Halston’s sense of capitalist greed, and expanding egotism ultimately necessitated his infamous billion-dollar deal with J.C. Penney, diluting his artistic exclusivity for the desire to “dress everybody in America.” Despite Halston’s intergalactic successes and failures, he managed to liberate the modern American woman from the confines of conservative, restrictive and modest fashions, ultimately functioning as a pioneer both embraced and tarnished under the pressures of American capitalism of the 1970s and 80s.
Amy Leydman