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(dog barking)
(crowd cheering)
(bell ringing)
(intriguing music)
- It was morning again in America.
Millions of men and women were going to work.
And high up above the streets, in his Olympic Tower,
one of America's most celebrated self-made men
- The most successful single individual
in the history of American fashion.
Ladies and gentlemen, Halston.
(audio screeching)
- was nowhere in sight.
(dramatic music)
- The question that all of New York
was asking last night was, whatever happened to Halston?
(static hissing)
- It's a story of high fashion and high finance,
as one of America's big names in fashion.
(audio screeching) (audio test beeping)
- It was business as usual, you could say.
They bought his name.
Sold off his life's work for pennies on the dollar.
And when that wasn't enough,
well, they forced him out of his own office.
(audio test beeping) (audio screeching)
Some will say he had it coming.
(audience applauding)
But what he didn't see coming were the tapes.
All 215 of them, erased, as per the corporation's order.
(audio screeching)
- Liza Minnelli in The Act.
(audience cheering)
- Sportswear, knits, broadcloth, menswear.
(audio screeching)
This is Andy Warhol's portrait of me, which was--
- You see, pictures meant everything to Halston.
- And texture demands texture.
- "Life is like a picture," he used to say.
- Who's that lucky guy?
- Well, he got his perfect picture.
Only the price turned out to be a little high.
(static hissing)
♪ Fame and fortune ♪
♪ How empty they can be ♪
♪ But when I hold you in my arms ♪
♪ That's heaven to me ♪
♪ Who cares for fame and fortune ♪
♪ They're only passing things ♪
♪ But the touch of your lips on mine ♪
♪ Makes me feel like a king ♪
♪ Your kind of love ♪
♪ Is a treasure I hold ♪
♪ It's so much greater ♪
♪ Than silver or gold ♪
- It all started in September of 1983,
when Carl Epstein joined Halston Enterprises.
He was Halston's new corporate manager,
and he would be his last.
(jazz noir music)
Carl wanted to learn everything about Halston,
so I brought him the tapes.
Who am I?
Just someone working in the archives.
Nobody important for our story, really.
Our story is Halston.
Behind the images flickering on the screen, who was Halston?
- I'd like to go back in time a little bit,
to just how you started.
I know that you started with hats and worked your way.
- Oh, I-- - Were we gonna move this?
- That's all right.
- Please let me know these things.
- Are we rolling?
- Am I-- - I was straightening the tie.
- Okay.
I don't mind it being a little disheveled.
- No, no, it's just-- - Oh, okay, thanks.
Halston was the custom milliner at Bergdorf.
And we lived around the corner from each other.
So he and I would walk to work every day.
We'd be talking, gossiping, having fun.
He was so much fun.
And then the minute we would arrive to the building,
and you'd have to go through the revolving door,
suddenly Halston had arrived at Bergdorf.
And the first time, it quite shocked me.
And then, of course, I understood.
He now has put on his Halston mask.
(elegant big band music)
And the voice would change.
Good morning, ladies.
He was dealing with the creme de la creme
of women in the world.
- Were you the person
who put the pillbox on Jackie Kennedy?
- Yes, I was. (reporter chuckles)
- That hat was genius.
If you look at the Inauguration,
most of those ladies wore a mink coat.
Jackie was in a cloth coat and a cloth hat.
- I'll never forget the impact that hat had.
Even out in Montana, where I was sitting at the time.
- It was a very funny story.
Because it was a rather windy day,
and she put her hand on the hat,
and it ended up to have a dent in it.
And so when, during all the ceremonies,
it had a dent in the hat.
And everybody who copied it put a dent in it,
which was so funny. (reporter laughing)
I was quite a young man,
but then I became very, very famous quickly on that.
It was the first time in the history of Bergdorf
that they promoted a designer personality.
(audio screeching)
And I headed a department of 150 milliners
and 12 sales ladies.
- Bergdorf was a very rarefied world.
But he was born in Des Moines, Iowa, as I read,
because he never told me any of this.
Halston was so busy moving forward.
I knew very little about Halston's personal life.
Certainly, I didn't know much about his background.
In November of 1966,
there was Truman Capote's Black and White Ball.
- Everybody wanted to be at that ball, because it was it,
you know, as far as where you should go, you know?
- You would measure your social importance by (chuckling)
the invitation, getting one or not getting one.
- Do you know if he was invited to the ball?
- I would have thought so, but now you, I have, I'm,
I have my doubts, I don't know, was he?
- Halston did not have an invite to the ball.
(epic music)
- Are you rolling, Harvey?
We have filmed this black and white ball in color
for your enlightenment.
Good heavens, here comes John Kenneth Galbraith.
The Maharani of Baroda is here.
And the Baroness de Rothchild, and Mrs. Loel Guinness.
We only tell you this because we know that
you were not rich, social, or beautiful enough
to be invited here tonight.
- The irony is
Halston had made more than 100 masks that night.
Kay Graham, who owned The Washington Post.
Candice Bergen.
Of course, D.D. Ryan.
D.D. Ryan was certainly one of the chicest women going.
- That's me, dancing with Truman
in the mask that Halston made for me.
- D.D. Ryan, former editor and fashion legend.
She had fallen on hard times since the '60s,
so Halston gave her a job.
- I've known H from the beginning.
From before the beginning, really.
Back then, he was still a milliner.
Milliners didn't go through the front door.
Different world then.
- I must have said, are you going?
And he said, "Oh, yes."
That's all I can say.
He didn't tell me everything.
He wasn't invited by Truman, but he got himself there.
- Was this Halston?
Or this one?
Was he even at the ball?
He was on everybody's face that night.
And yet, he was invisible.
- He called me one day and said,
"There's something that I need to tell you."
I was in Southampton, I was invited to a very grand dinner.
Our hostess is a client, and she likes me,
and she invited me.
And we sat down.
And two of the husbands never sat down.
They stood behind their chairs, everybody was seated,
and the hostess looked up.
And they said, "If these two faggots are at table,
"we will not be joining you for your dinner."
(gentle piano music)
He said, "Tom, I just need you to understand
"that you and I could not hope
"to be anything more than trained faggot poodles,
"to jump through the hoops of these rich people."
- The mental image most people have
of a male homosexual looks pretty much like this.
A man with effeminate characteristics.
The film you are now watching
is purposely being projected in its negative form
to prevent identification of the people it shows.
The location is a public bathing beach
at 21st Street on Miami Beach.
The scenes were photographed with telescopic lenses
from a hidden vantage point.
Despite the negative image,
the actions themselves are easily recognized.
(upbeat music)
- I met Halston at Fire Island.
He was just, you know, just a fabulous human being.
And we became fast friends.
♪ This precious time just kept me waiting ♪
- The freedom of our sexuality there, life before AIDS.
Halston and I partied a great deal together.
♪ In a brand new groove ♪
- We would go dancing in Harlem. (chuckles)
♪ Don't need your help and your tight and old rules ♪
- It was always very, very, very eclectic.
- Now!
- But the '60s in general
were a political, moral, social revolution.
- Halston understood that there was
a whole new social order coming in.
The war baby boom came of age.
Drugs, sex, and rock and roll.
Even the French couture changed.
St. Laurent, Givenchy, and Cardin
opened up ready-to-wear boutiques.
And so, Halston saw all of that in Paris,
and there was tension with the Bergdorf people.
- Halston came to see me, and he said, "I have backing.
"Would you clean up your act?"
I was deep into drugs by that time.
But I did stop intravenous drugs
and went to work with him.
♪ This the house that Jack built, y'all ♪
♪ Remember this house ♪
♪ This was the land the he worked by hand ♪
- Well, the salon was on 68th Street and Madison,
in this little, tiny walk-up kind of derelict building.
Compared to Bergdorf Goodman, I thought, like, you know,
wow, this is, like, didn't feel so fancy.
Then you went upstairs, a plain door, and you'd knock,
and then you'd go in, it was just magic.
♪ What is the use of crying ♪
- Basically, it was just a floor-through apartment
that they turned into this incredible background,
which is all just sort of magical and exotic,
and you felt like you were in an Indian palace
or you didn't know where you were.
You're on safari.
It was very wild.
And I remember the furniture,
because it was very uncomfortable.
It was horn furniture.
Like you sat in them,
and you just didn't want to sit in them,
but it looked great.
♪ In the house that Jack built ♪ ♪ The house that Jack built ♪
♪ I'm gonn' remember this house ♪
♪ The house that Jack built ♪
- Halston made the atmosphere very democratic.
I mean, I'm a poor kid from Long Island City.
But then there was Marisa Berenson and Berry,
who grew up in Paris.
- It was a mix of social circles.
And that's what was so great about that era,
is that it was a big mix of interesting,
fascinating people.
Like Elsa.
- I love to be with homosexuals.
I stay 15 years with homosexuals, and I loved them.
Because I didn't have the lover.
(clapperboard snapping)
- Pat Cleveland was discovered on a subway car.
- I was still in high school.
I went into the room, and he looked at me and he said,
"Okay, you'll be here tomorrow for the show."
- He was totally laser-focused
on this collection
because, in his mind, I'm sure this was make or break.
- All the ladies of society were there.
The Vogue ladies were sitting in the front row.
Oh, my goodness, this is it, we're doing this show.
And he lined us girls up.
We were all perfectly dressed.
And he would go to the first girl,
and he'd whisper something into their ear.
And he'd say, "Now, don't forget, you're the best."
♪ And what costume shall the poor girl wear ♪
- His clothes hit me like, this is it.
This is the fashion that I would want to wear.
♪ To all tomorrow's parties ♪
- No zippers.
Just get in and out over your head.
♪ A hand-me-down dress ♪
- Overnight success.
It was a clean look.
The simplicity was really needed after the '60s.
And it was all-American, from an all-American boy.
(audience applauding)
- Let's meet our first challenger.
So, will you enter and sign in, please?
(playful music)
Mr. X.
(audience applauding)
Panel, this is Mr. X,
and may I tell you that Mr. X is concerned with a product.
And now let's show our audience just who our guest is
and what his product is.
(audience applauding)
- Can I rule out that your name is Valentino?
- You can rule that out.
- All right, no, no, I'm sure if I hear the name, I'll know.
It's because I don't recognize you on site.
But would the clothing be the new sensation hot pants?
- That's it! - Yes.
- Is that right?
(audience applauding)
(mysterious music)
- Felt like the beginning because he was so enthusiastic,
and everybody was so charmed with him, and so young,
and it was enticing.
You just wanted to be in the room with him.
- I was 18.
I was so innocent.
I knew nothing.
I was from the Midwest.
Everyone was unusual for me.
Like Pat Ast.
She was an Andy Warhol superstar with frizzy hair.
♪ I'm just wild about Andy ♪
♪ And Andy's wild about me ♪
♪ The heavenly blisses of his kisses ♪
♪ They fill me with ecstasy ♪
- This was definitely the in crowd.
Andy kept saying, "Oh, this is, you know,
"this is so in, Bob.
"This is so in."
He knew Halston from the 1950s,
when Andy was doing ads and windows for Bergdorf's.
He was comfortable in the world of fashion.
♪ Wild about me ♪
(vibrant music)
(phone line beeps)
(interviewer laughing)
- Joe was not only the illustrator,
but a close friend.
You know, Halston was very cool, and Joe was very hot.
- He was drawn to people
who just displayed their emotions.
And also, have this tremendous aesthetic side.
- And he believed so much on me, Halston.
- Elsa would be there drawing things all the time.
And Halston said, "You need to be a jewelry designer."
And somehow she made this jewelry for us, which is,
I had two of these, one was stolen.
- Why I did do jewelry?
I just was trapped into it.
I did something for fun, it became a success.
- Really?
- We were hipsters.
We thought we were.
We probably weren't at all, but, you know.
My husband, Bill, was starting to work at Halston's.
They got along really well together.
In the beginning, he couldn't wait to go to work.
And that's a great feeling, isn't it?
- Bill Dugan was the first disciple.
And 12 years later, he was still spreading the gospel.
- If you want to understand Halston's clothes,
you have to understand the lineage first.
You see, when he did his first line,
I think he was the first to be surprised
at how good he really was.
The other who was surprised, of course, was his mentor.
- Oh, I think perhaps Charles James,
who was a friend of mine.
(dramatic music)
(audience applauding)
- Charles James is such an amazing figure.
Difficult, controversial.
But he's one of these people that,
he was so amazingly talented.
♪ I know what it is to be young ♪
- Even the Europeans understood
that Charles James was a singular genius.
♪ You don't know what it is ♪
♪ To be old ♪
- Halston had this incredible fascination,
and I would say envy of Charles James.
♪ You'll be saying the same thing ♪
- He mimicked Charles.
Charles would say things like,
"You're only as good as who you dress."
And suddenly Halston was saying,
"You're only as good as who you dress."
♪ I've asked so many questions ♪
- In the late '60s,
Charles James was really out of his luck, and he owed money.
And he really wasn't designing.
♪ Find all the answers ♪
- It's true that you're considering going on welfare,
isn't it? - Yes, it is.
In order to get my doctor's bills paid.
It's just the most shocking--
- Halston felt for him.
♪ There'll be days to remember ♪
- So he hired Charles James
to help him with a collection.
(gentle piano music)
- James's working methodology was overworking
and overworking the same idea,
and creating things that were so incredibly complicated
that it simply wasn't viable.
- Charles was furious throughout the whole thing
'cause it wasn't right.
Charles wanted control, Halston wanted control.
It was almost like father and rebellious son.
It was a disaster, by the way.
The collection was a disaster.
- The few pieces that I've seen
look a little tortured, frankly.
Very typical of James's work,
where he would take fabric and twist it and torque it.
And in the end result, you had things that looked amazing,
in a way, but somehow unwearable.
- Halston said, "Well, I just want you to know that,
"you know, I'm locking Charles out of the workroom."
- Halston is a middle-of-the-road man,
who would be better as a buyer in a store, or a stylist.
He knows how to select good things to copy.
But his passion has been to put his name on it.
For which action, the word plagiarism is correct.
- Halston didn't copy.
Eventually, I went to work for Halston,
and I saw that Halston took concepts of Charles James
and relaxed them.
His clothes were for a modern time.
For a time where women's lifestyle
had changed completely.
I mean, he understood that.
(ethereal music)
- Elegance and ease.
A sense of owning power, without being masculine.
And honoring the body that you have.
Basically, you were usually naked underneath.
- You were free inside your clothes.
- He took away the cage.
And he made things
as though you didn't really need the structure
as much as you needed the woman.
He really based most of his collection on most of us girls.
- I think maybe we just had a pin there to hold it up,
it might be good, huh?
- Mm-hmm.
- Let's see you turn in it, Chrissy, huh?
- Fabric to Halston was like clay to a sculptor.
He knew how to use it.
And everything was cut on the bias, so it spiraled.
- Basically, bias is cutting fabric
on an oblique, or 45-degree angle.
Fabric is usually cut on the straight grain.
If you've ever cut something on the bias,
it flows over the body.
It opens up, if you will.
- It's very hard to do it.
Nothing is straight.
It's very hard to sew, everything moves.
Especially on chiffon, it's very hard to control.
But he made it so easy.
- He just would throw a piece of fabric on the floor,
and cut through it.
Pick it up, throw it on you, and then, pfft, it was a dress.
- That's genius.
It's a dress.
Just from the way he cut it.
I don't know anybody who could do that.
He's the only one.
- That's probably the largest Halston collection
of all the museums in the States.
When I started working here,
I started really looking at the clothes.
And I'm most fascinated with the single-seam patterns.
Similar to the one that's up there,
which looks like a painting,
is actually the pattern for that dress.
It's really hard to see it, flat.
But, and just spirals.
And this is another one
that is cut from one piece of fabric, folded.
You cut out the neck, and the seam goes from here to here,
down the side, and then across.
It's one piece of fabric.
The pattern looks like a Cuisinart blade.
(ethereal music)
Very much like the art, at the time, like abstract art.
It was reducing it down to its least common denominators.
- I think if fashion history would write it,
I'd like to have a credit point of saying
maybe we cleaned it up a bit, where, you know,
I have a theory that less becomes more, so much.
- Uh-huh.
- I felt more intimidated by Halston
than by whatever man I met in my life.
- Because?
- Because everything he was doing was great.
Every time, every time.
He astonished me.
- How do you feel when you, say,
walk into a restaurant in New York, and a lady comes in
looking smashing in a Halston outfit?
- I'm very proud.
I'm just very proud if somebody looks good in it, you know?
- What if she comes in
and doesn't look good in it?
- Then I'm not so proud. (laughing)
(vibrant music)
- The Halston market
is in the better stores across the country.
In New York, it's Bergdorf Goodman,
where he has a boutique
in the same spot he started selling hats to rich ladies
15 years ago.
This is Halston off the rack.
The favorite item?
An Ultrasuede shirt dress with a $200 price tag
that has broken all previous sales records.
- You're late.
My god, are you ever on time, come on.
- But for real extravagance,
the ladies come to Halston's own showroom on Madison Avenue,
where super saleswoman Pat Ast
will give them that special treatment.
- What about Pat Ast?
Some people have suggested that by using her,
you're putting down fashion a bit.
- Well, if you think that Patty is a put-down,
but I don't think so.
I take her very seriously.
And I like to make her glamorous.
- Halston designs things that are made especially for me,
which is the most incredible thing, 'cause looking at me,
you know I'm not the normal size woman.
- I think he appreciated the woman's body.
I think he appreciated all the different types of women.
He loved all of the diversity of his models.
- If you take this down, Iman. - Yeah.
- And you turn around, that way so you see a decollete.
This is Iman's first show.
She's never been in a fashion show before.
How do you feel about your first fashion show, Iman?
- I'm very nervous.
- He always loved different personalities.
And he encouraged that.
- Do you think that models are some of the sexy,
most beautiful girls in the world?
- Sometimes.
- Do you think they should all be in the movies?
- No.
- He also loved the idea of being controversial.
I remember the Coty Award Show,
he decided it was gonna be a happening, so anything goes.
- Tell me something.
- I'm gonna tell you.
I hope that show goes better than the rehearsal.
- All the fashion world is waiting for the Coty Awards.
- The audience in the Coty Awards
tend to be a little more formal.
But Halston wanted to be very irreverent.
- Andy and Halston came up with this idea
that it was like a talent show, Halston's Talent Hour.
("When the Saints Go Marching In")
I played the clarinet.
He said, "What can you do?" (laughing)
"What else can you do?"
♪ Oh yeah ♪
- The audience, they didn't know what to make of it.
(chuckles)
Halston wanted it to be, just throw everything in,
including the kitchen sink.
And by the way, have Pat come out of the birthday cake.
♪ Ah ah ah ah ah ♪
♪ Happy birthday to me ♪
♪ Happy birthday, happy birthday ♪
(gentle instrumental music)
- He took a chance, a leap of faith to be something
that maybe a lot of people think they can't do.
He would say, "You can have anything you want.
"You're a good person."
You know, that feeling that somebody believes in you.
You know?
And because of that, you know, he made me stronger.
(chuckling)
Waterproof. (chuckling)
I remember one time we went out West to do a show,
and Halston said, "I want you to come with me.
I wanna see something."
He rented a car.
And you never saw him drive 'cause we'd always be in limos.
And we went way out in the middle of nowhere, out there.
Not a lot to look at. (chuckles)
Sky and earth.
And he said, "That's where I grew up.
"This is where I grew up."
And we'd be in the middle of nowhere.
Just, like, farms, with the big rolls of hay.
He said, "I just wanted to come by here."
- I only lived in Iowa for about five minutes, you know.
I mean, I moved out of Iowa as a young man.
It was during the Second World War,
and my father was in a business
that took us from one place to another,
so I lived in the Lake of the Ozarks,
and I lived in Kentucky, and I lived in Missouri,
and then we finally settled in Indiana.
So I was all over, you know.
It was sort of an unsettled time.
- When you do go back home--
- There is no home in Iowa, you see?
What else do you think we should go over?
- Just a little bit of the history.
I think that would be good for us to have and so forth.
- Oh, let's not go into the whole history crap, you know.
What about right now?
- But this is history.
- The past just doesn't interest me so much.
I think you have pretty much, I think you have enough.
- And we need a transcript
as soon as possible.
(jazz noir music)
- His mother would come and visit,
and she always called him Hahl-ston.
And he had changed the pronunciation to Hall-ston,
but she would correct you.
"His name is Hahl-ston, it's a family name."
She also used to say Hahl-ston had disappeared,
but Hall-ston was a force to be reckoned with.
And this is the manager of the boutique.
Ed was just as handsome as Halston.
And had just as much charisma.
- Ed Austin.
(phone line beeps)
- Never mentioned his dad,
but he called his mom every week, every Monday afternoon.
Hallie Mae.
I'm being careful about what I'm saying.
I don't know how much you know about me.
- I didn't know it at the time, but apparently,
Halston and Ed had had a relationship earlier.
(thunder rumbling)
- I was kept hidden.
I still don't know why.
I would go to his house at night.
The doorman would stop me and say,
"The deliveries go in the back," that sort of thing.
We had a wonderful relationship.
He used to call me the crown prince, and he was the king.
- When did it end?
- One Christmas,
Ed had done this absolutely beautiful window.
And that was the day that Victor Hugo took over.
- Victor came down
and started to rearrange Ed's window.
It was very asymmetrical, and very haphazard.
But Halston came and loved the window.
When Ed saw it, he just put on his coat and went home.
It was the changing of the guard.
- Are you looking for his Rosebud?
The one thing that explains his whole life?
You won't find one.
Not with Halston.
What you see is what you get, baby.
- Victor was Venezuelan,
and he was a bad boy who got into a lot of trouble.
- My theory has always been that
Halston came from an alcoholic family.
That his father had a problem.
And that Halston recreated his family life with Victor
as the dysfunctional person
who is constantly going to keep everything off balance.
(upbeat music)
- He'd do the pregnancy, Patty Hearst.
I mean, really crazy.
But this was his personality, extreme.
- Roy, I found these pictures of us
in my mom's attic.
Darling H, you love life and I love you.
- Ladies and gentlemen, Liza Minnelli.
(epic music) (audience applauding)
- When I met Halston,
I just remember him talking and me listening.
(camera shutter clicks)
He'd say, "I got it, all right," and just put it on you.
And it danced with you, that's it.
His clothes danced with you.
(camera shutter clicks)
We were joined at the hip from then on.
He was like my dad, in a way,
because when I was a little girl,
my father would give me five costumes every year.
And it was a dress from An American In Paris.
And perfectly made, exactly like for the ladies.
And I guess I got into appreciating
how clothes could change the way you felt.
- She dressed only in Halston, ever.
I mean, she still does.
- Yes. (audience applauding)
- Liza Minnelli.
(audience cheering and applauding)
♪ Say yes ♪
♪ Life keeps happening every day ♪
- And this is Halston, who is, I think, today,
wouldn't you say, the best-known name,
no, you shouldn't say best and worst
'cause then other designers get upset.
You're pretty good, Halston. - Thank you.
(all laughing)
♪ You'll never win if you never play ♪
- He would always think, how do I go to that next level?
♪ There's mink and marigold right outside ♪
♪ And long white Cadillacs ♪
- He was looking for a perfume company.
♪ Nothing's gained if there's nothing tried ♪
♪ Say yes ♪
- Every single week,
he was having meetings with Revlon's Sol Levine, Coty.
- A Mr. Bannon of IFF,
he'd like to meet with you today if possible.
- And then finally, Max Factor.
And Max Factor was a subsidiary of Norton Simon.
♪ Say yes ♪
♪ Yes, I can ♪
- I remember Halston saying to Andy and me,
"You know, I really like the Norton Simon people
"because they're all so tall."
David Mahoney was the chairman of Norton Simon.
And he was tall, good-looking,
and you know, a lot of glamour.
♪ There's lots of chaff, but there's lots of wheat ♪
♪ Say yes ♪
- It seemed like a good match.
If he was bought in total under Norton Simon,
he'd have the freedom to explore and to develop more
of what Halston wanted.
♪ Yes, I'll dare ♪
♪ Yes, I'll fly ♪
♪ Yes (chuckling) ♪ (audience applauding)
(gentle piano music)
- At the time, it seemed like a huge coup.
And all his friends, I mean, including Andy and all of us,
were very happy for him.
- He told me, "Gino, we're gonna be very busy
"because I'm gonna design furniture, car interiors.
"I'm gonna design a carpet."
- Well, don't you find that if you take on that many things,
that one of your projects is going to suffer?
- It's rather like growing a tree.
You know, everyone thinks you're an overnight success.
I've worked very hard for 20 years.
And, you know, it's just a further extension of it,
it's another branch.
And they all help each other, in a curious way.
- Was this the beginning of the end?
Or was it just the beginning?
(vibrant music)
- In 1973, five American designers
and five French designers
were showing their collections at one time, at one place,
the Palace of Versailles.
- American designers had never been invited
to show in Paris.
And this was a huge, huge deal.
- For Halston, it was very important.
He'd go as far as he had to go to get it
to be the best he thought he could make it.
- He realized that you need a star in there.
What happened was that Halston got David Mahoney
to sponsor the trip, and David loved it.
He fit right in there.
(gentle instrumental music)
- David Mahoney seemed to me
to be fairly ambitious socially.
And like so many self-made people,
they wanted to be part of this kinda cafe society.
- It was a very competitive evening.
- I think the designers were having difficulty
with each other.
The French took up all the time for the rehearsal,
and we were the addendums.
It was rude, actually.
- Their whole presentation was beyond grand.
They changed orchestras
for each of the different designer segments.
- We couldn't rehearse.
All of us were waiting and waiting.
It was cold, damp.
Unfortunately with Halston, it got to him.
- A terrible fight seems to break out.
I heard some very vicious things were said.
- He did have a blowup, very dramatic.
- It was very difficult.
Halston left, and Liza said, you know,
"We've got to get this show done."
- She's the one who sat down with Halston.
She unified everybody.
- We'd open, and I'd sing Bonjour Paris.
♪ I wanna step out down the Champs-Elysee ♪
♪ From the Arch of Triumph to the Petit Palais ♪
♪ That's for me ♪
♪ Bonjour, Paris ♪ - Bonjour, Paris!
So.
(upbeat music)
Let's get started.
And we were off.
- It was directed like a musical.
- Liza said, "Look, it doesn't wanna look rehearsed.
"The more human, the more goofed up,
"that's gonna make this happen."
- We were so wild, in comparison.
We had 12 African-American girls.
They only had one.
- No sets, it was just straightforward fashion,
in your face, and modern.
- All of that energy and that joy and that wonder
and that curiosity.
Well, that is America.
(audience applauding)
At the end of Halston's piece,
they threw their programs up in the air.
They went bananas.
- Versailles put American fashion on the map.
On the map.
- Halston was at the top of his game.
He came like a king of the Americans.
- Versailles was an extension
of what he felt he could achieve going down the road
because of Norton Simon.
When he came back, the whole thing changed.
His first real office by himself
was all lined with mirrors, all along.
It was like, totally mirrored.
Very modern and very slick and minimal.
You can see his changing of his whole almost psyche.
The hair started getting cut less bohemian,
more crisp and clean, opened his face.
The white shirt, the tie.
He's very in control.
He's very, he is Halston.
He is Halston, you know?
And it was like, wow!
(slow jazz music)
- I'm Halston, and this is my home.
The architect was Paul Rudolph.
And the day I saw it, I bought it.
It's the only real modern house
built in the City of New York since the Second World War.
It's like living in a three-dimensional sculpture.
- When I was hired by Norton Simon,
of course I had to meet Halston.
So I went to his townhouse.
And he showed me through the whole thing,
and he was clearly delighted with his new toy.
And I was terribly impressed.
And I remember saying to him,
I'm gonna enjoy making money for you, Halston,
'cause you know how to spend it.
My brief was that, whatever else you do,
you've got to get the fragrance underway.
He wanted Elsa to design the bottle.
- Elsa Peretti would come in.
He wanted it to be sort of a teardrop shape,
like her iconic necklaces.
And they went through a number of iterations.
- I design not thinking about the deadline.
You know how much time it take me to do this glass?
- - No.
- From '74 up to now.
And they're still not good.
(ethereal music)
- No one had ever seen a bottle like that.
It had a curved neck.
Max Factor people hated it.
- Production people at Max Factor called me and said,
"You know what this nut is doing now?
"He's putting out a bottle that looks like a glob.
"You can't fill it from the top.
"It won't work."
- They had to get a special stopper.
They were talking about the economics of it.
- I don't think Halston really cared
what they thought.
(machinery whirring)
- It is my name attached to it,
so I want to live with this for a long time.
Just the bottle alone is a revolutionary new concept.
- Then I got another phone call.
It said, "You also realize what he's doing?
"He's not even putting his name on it."
- Because he thought it was a work of art.
And simplicity was the keynote.
So his name was on the ribbon
with which the bottle itself was tied.
No one else had done it that way before.
And then the fragrance caught on.
It became a seller.
(exciting music)
The largest American designer fragrance.
The stores couldn't get it fast enough.
It was ballistic.
- You'd get into a taxi in New York,
and the taxi driver would say,
"Oh, you smell good, you're wearing Halston."
Once it started to go, everything started to go.
- I began a very large license program.
We were the first American designer
to really do this heavy.
- I have two fragrances for men, a tie licensee,
two suede sport jackets.
We have an entire cosmetic line.
My name is Halston.
I'm Halston.
- You've got luggage, you've got--
- Rugs, sheets, perfume, cosmetics.
- Really?
- Shoes, bags, gloves, sunglasses,
all kinds of things.
- Holy cow, you wouldn't have 20 till payday, would you?
I'm a little short. (audience laughing)
- The United States of America.
- He designed the uniform for the '76 Olympics.
- He designed the new Girl Scout Uniform for leaders,
so we don't have to wear the drab-looking things we used to.
Thank you. - Thank you very much,
you know. (audience applauding)
- And you also dressed the Avis--
- Well, the whole Avis Company.
No, I do a lot of things like that.
- When do you sleep?
- Oh, well, I sleep. (audience applauding)
- I would call that the golden years.
What he touched turned to gold.
He set up the deal for Elsa to go with Tiffany.
- Halston took me there, and there I was, with Tiffany.
- That's it, that's it, that's all, please.
- He made the wedding clothes
for Sly and the Family Stone.
- He designed
all the costumes for Martha Graham,
and then supported the company.
(dramatic music)
- He had a lot of things on his plate.
And I have a feeling that is where some of the tension
started to happen.
- Halston felt that he, individually,
had to design everything that was licensed,
and that was a monumental task.
- I must be a part of it.
I never, ever just lent my name
for a commercial business venture.
- From the first day I got there,
one of the things that I did every couple of weeks
was go to the bank and take out a ton of cash
and bring it back in an envelope.
He'd say, "I might be in a meeting,
but if Mr. Fisher comes,
"just give him the envelope."
I never saw him snort cocaine, but I paid,
I mean, I got a lot of money every few weeks.
$2,000 to $3,000.
- I want to stop all the kind of bullshit
that we were drug addicts.
We'd smoke, yeah, but we work.
For that our things were going.
For that Halston thing.
What do you think, with Halston,
we were there and smoking?
No, we were thinking, what you wear, what you do
all night long.
I was working all night long.
Yeah, we took drugs (snorts) of course.
How you cannot take drugs, being up all night long?
But it was smoking.
It was not heavy drugs.
A little coke sometimes.
- Halston took me into his office one day,
and he just said, "You know,
I want somebody who is completely
committed to the business."
- I went to work for Halston.
The best thing I ever did.
I was totally, 1,000% devoted to him.
I remember going in to set up my office.
It would start to rain.
And when I got off the elevator,
Halston was standing there.
He looked at me, and he said, "You're all wet."
He was carrying a red raincoat, and he said,
"I want you to try this on.
"I made this for Liza, but I want you to have it."
(jazz noir music)
He was such a hard worker.
I mean, he'd come in early, go home late,
and always accomplish something.
Until Studio 54.
♪ Dance ♪
♪ Just a feeling ♪
♪ Dance ♪ ♪ Just a feeling ♪
- I took Halston to Studio 54.
So I don't know what other stories you heard,
but I remember that was the first time, and he says,
"I'm gonna bring friends."
- Halston gave a birthday party for Bianca Jagger,
and Bianca got on the horse,
and that photograph went around the world.
And that made 54 like the place where everybody went.
(camera shutter clicking)
- You're a devotee of Studio 54.
What do you see there?
- As Truman said, it's the only democracy.
It's good for everybody on every level of society.
- This is the scene
outside a New York disco called Studio 54.
This is the place that's in with the disco crowd,
except that these people are still out.
Of course, Liza Minnelli and her kind of celebrities
sweep right through the protective ranks
of doorkeepers.
- They are discriminating at Studio 54.
Recently, a president of a Wall Street brokerage firm
was ejected, and he was a member.
So he's suing for a million.
- I'll do a Donna Summer song.
Ah. (laughing)
(disco music)
- I think they lived out a lot of their fantasies.
As gay boys, Hollywood was such a big influence
on both Andy and Halston.
- I was born in the Midwest.
And, you know, much of your life was really probably
involved in going to the movies on Saturdays and Sundays.
- If you were at a dinner party
and you could have one person on the left
and one on the right, who would that be?
- Halston and Elizabeth Taylor.
- Why?
- Oh, they're both wonderful.
- They weren't society,
but they became a new kind of society.
Suddenly, you know, gays were part of society.
Many more Jews were part of society.
- He wasn't a snob.
Halston wasn't a snob.
He wasn't uppity.
He wasn't anything.
- Both you and Halston come from Indiana.
You sound like Cary Grant, you sound like Noel Coward.
(both laughing)
You moved the accent.
Were you unhappy at some point with where you came from,
and decided, I'm going to show them?
- Never.
Never.
I wasn't, anyway.
- Well, everybody was free love, and free this,
and poppers and coke and this and that.
It got very muddy, and it's like quicksand.
If everybody around you is going down,
you're gonna go too.
- Victor was a destructive force.
Andy did Victor's portraits, I think he did two.
And one day, Victor shows up
with the paintings completely covered with graffiti,
and just a mess.
And he had painted over them,
thinking this was like taking Andy's art to another level.
And Andy was really mad.
And Andy was like,
"Don't think I'm doing new ones, Victor."
(upbeat music)
- Company was booming, so I went out looking for space.
And I came upon this thing in Olympic Tower,
and that was the end of the search,
because Halston, "That's the one we're gonna get."
The architect came up with some plans,
and Halston didn't like them.
He wanted something that took spectacular use of the space.
And he began to design what he wanted.
Mirrors everywhere.
The walls were mirrors.
Everything was mirrors.
Except my office.
I wouldn't allow them to put up mirrors in my office.
I didn't wanna look at myself all day.
- Halston made sure that his entire workroom
were in a room with a lot of windows,
so that as they sewed and fitted every day,
they didn't feel confined.
That really impressed me.
- When the workmen saw the space, the women wept.
- That was the best workroom in the world.
Was even too good to be a workroom.
(upbeat music)
- There wasn't, at the time, I don't think there is today,
a fashion house ever as grand as that was.
(camera shutter clicking)
- In that space,
he had reached something very specific to him.
That's where he felt he belonged.
♪ I'm in with the in crowd ♪
- The shows there were amazing.
You felt like walking on a cloud down the runway.
♪ I'm in with the in crowd ♪
- Once he moved into the Olympic Tower,
his front row was the most glamorous in New York.
Diana Vreeland, Lee Radziwill, Liza Minnelli.
(camera shutter clicking)
- He was the first to really bring in movie stars.
(audience applauding)
- They are the elite of New York City,
and they've been invited by Halston,
who's standing here beside me.
- I always saw him as famous.
- I made it in New York.
- But then, of course, it became ginormous.
- And what he did was
he surrounded himself for public appearances
with what became known as the Halstonettes.
♪ I go where the in crowd goes ♪
- Brilliant marketing, brilliant.
- Sometimes there were 20 of us, you know?
- Some of the people I knew in the fashion business,
I mean, they were totally dismissive.
I mean, who does he think he is?
And the answer is, what picture is gonna run?
Is it gonna be some fashion designer standing by himself?
Or is it gonna be Halston with the Halstonettes?
♪ They know the in crowd is out of sight ♪
- I want to run the faces of all
the women close-up.
- Right.
- We've done that.
Okay, where are the--
- John Fairchild is the publisher
of Women's Wear.
As always, he has the final word
on how last night's party will look in the next edition.
Women's Wear is the bible of the industry.
- Halston, if they stand on the table,
will it hurt the table?
- It would, 'cause I just had 'em lacquered.
- No, no, no.
Can they stand on the table with their bare feet?
- Whatever makes you happy.
Assistants.
- Yes?
- Boy, what a shot that is, whoa.
- Leave the candles.
- Everybody at the Olympic Tower called him H.
And they'd say, "H?"
And he'd say, "I am the emperor."
And he was believing this stuff.
- Halston, is it tougher to get on top,
or to stay on top?
- Halston said, "Let me tell you, we're going to China."
I'm like, wow.
- China wanted to show the world
that they were opening up.
So they invited the master of publicity
to visit the silk cities.
- Come on, D.D., come on, everybody.
What I want to explain to you all is what we're doing.
- With the China trip, you could see the brain working.
Each girl had their own personal collection designed.
Everything, all laid out.
- We just needed to pack our lingerie and makeup.
- We will also go to the Ming tombs,
and we'll go to the Forbidden City.
And one of the best places is going to be, of course,
the Great Wall of China.
- Every affair, you know, dinner here, dinner there.
Everything was choreographed.
It was just incredible.
- If it's a cold day, she'll wear, you know,
sort of a shawl like this, but this is a Chinatex silk.
- He just had total control.
- Hi, Andy. - Hi, Andy.
- Come on in
and get photographed, Andy. (chuckling)
- He asked me one day, "Do you dream of what you're doing?"
And, obviously, I was exhausted from going to Studio 54
and all those parties, and I was like,
no, I haven't dreamt of it.
He's like, "You know, Naeem, it'll be amazing.
"You'll be a great designer when you start dreaming.
"It should come to you in the night,
"then you know that you are thinking about it."
- Naeem, why don't you show Andy, put the lights on,
and make 'em sparkle over there, huh?
Those are your things.
- So to him, night and day, it was there.
- You see, this is only part of them.
We've got another about 15 people, 'cause all--
- There must have been about 30 people.
And I was coordinating it.
There was 100 pieces of Hartmann luggage.
- We were going to China.
Who got invited to China?
(models cheering and laughing)
(upbeat music)
- I said to a Chinese executive,
we're coming with a lot of luggage.
Do you have a way of handling it?
He said, "Oh, yes, yes."
And he came with a shopping cart.
They had one shopping cart to move our luggage. (laughing)
- This is the beginning of the world tour of fashions
by Halston.
- I think there's a big change.
- Why?
- Well, I think it's America's time, really.
- Here he is,
sort of an ambassador of American fashion.
He became somewhat like a world figure.
(camera shutter clicks)
(speaking in foreign language)
(camera shutter clicking)
- But we were basically there to go to the silk factories.
- Those people who had done the fabrics
actually got to see how you could play with the fabric.
So they were just, like, in awe.
It was wonderful.
I was in awe of them being in awe of us.
- That's great. (woman laughing)
That's great, I love that on you.
I love that on you. (crowd applauding)
- It might be a little tight,
but I consider it a great compliment
that she wanted to put it on.
- Halston was saying, "No, they wanna modernize.
"They wanna modernize here."
- Is it that complicated to change the patterns?
- I think that made the trip for Halston.
Because I think he thought he could contribute something
to the people of China. (camera shutter clicking)
- That was really PR.
And he got tremendous amount of publicity.
He was all over.
And when you see the pictures, they were beautiful.
I mean, they looked fantastic.
You know, if you didn't know the back side of the story,
it looked like a fantastic trip.
Halston and the group here, Halston and the group there.
They all looked great.
You know, half of them are really miserable,
but they all looked terrific. (laughing)
(audio screeching)
- Oh, I'm staying.
It's exhausting, and I'm just starting.
- We had a film crew following us the whole time.
- Every day was directed by Halston.
- Get out of the camera way.
The cameras are here, so you can't be here,
you have to be on the other side.
- He just wanted total control.
And it was too much, it became too much.
- I want you all stand up there, on the runway.
Not in twos and twos.
You're doing it like a fashion show.
It looks so dumb.
Go out again.
No, not please, just do it.
- He was a perfectionist.
He had a very rough time in giving up.
It was an emotional, like, lock-in.
- No, nothing's lined up.
Connie?
Can't you people line it up like I've lined it up?
I mean, really.
Look at the boards.
It's so dumb.
What do you think I did all this for?
Well, I hope nobody has to go tonight
because we've got to go through this.
- He was a bit of a bully.
You really had to stand up to him, otherwise, you'd be lost.
And there wasn't a lot of people who could do that.
Very, very few people in our company.
- He would snap at you.
And even though we all had the same amount of abuse,
you took it personally.
I never, ever got used to being yelled at.
- It just became a different relationship
and a different company.
- Even with Faye, I mean, she defended that man.
But he'd just take it all out on her.
Scream and yell at the top of his lungs, I mean.
- Come on, come on, D. D.
Come on, everybody.
Don't walk out like you're a parade.
- But the aura of it all, and being a part of it,
kept you hooked.
You know, eventually,
he had all of us wear black at the office.
He wanted us to be a backdrop to the clothes.
And everything, to him, was a PR event.
We were all PR events.
It was the stage set that was us.
- Margaret.
(Margaret laughing)
- What we're looking for is the illusion of art.
- Can I give you a little bit of highlight there?
That's very good.
- You see, our mistake, including Halston,
is to take our name too seriously.
I mean, for me.
I was a jewelry designer.
I was a good jewelry designer.
I dedicate all my time to it.
- We had fights because he was so much out of it, you know.
Because I'm vulgar.
Not vulgar, but, you know, I cannot withstand all the time,
thinking that the pencil has to be like that, impossible.
(clapperboard snapping)
(ominous music)
- He became a real loner.
- And did you see the Elizabeth cover?
- Oh, it's so-- - Oh, that's beautiful.
- Isn't that wonderful? - I love it for her.
- She looks great. - She looks really great.
- I love the picture of her inside.
- It's good.
- Oh, it looks great.
- Do you like that? - Mm-hmm, I love it.
- Yeah, I think Elizabeth will like that.
- Color is fabulous.
Fabulous, it looks good, uh-huh.
- With the cover of Harper's Bazaar, I just love it on her.
- And the truth of the matter is
that his business was slowing down.
He peaked, and other names were showing up.
- Which brings us to Calvins,
and the survival of the fittest.
- Good morning, Calvin Klein, I presume.
Is that your name?
- Perry Ellis is a new name in fashion.
- But Halston was never one to fall behind.
- I am pleased to announce an association
between Halston Enterprises and JCPenney.
Today, we have signed $1 billion retail sales agreement.
- It was a license over five years.
The largest designer deal that had ever been made.
Enough money to make anyone, even Norton Simon,
sit up and take notice.
- I begged him, I begged him not to do the Penney thing.
This is gonna kill us.
And he kept saying, "No, no, no, no, no.
"I wanna dress everybody in America."
- It sounded like a good deal to me,
to create things for people who couldn't afford his, yes.
- Well, you know, strangely enough,
when I was a kid, I always shopped at Penney's.
My mother always took me to Penney's to buy all the clothes
that we wore to school and everything else.
And it's true, I come from Des Moines, Iowa.
And my mother being a practical Midwestern lady,
always took us there.
- In one highly-publicized stroke of the pen,
Halston moved from class to mass.
The reaction of the fashion world
ranged from shock to outrage.
- JCPenney?
- Yes, JCPenney,
that nationwide middle-class retailer
that offers clothes right off the rack,
has landed a very big designer.
- Would you expect to find a designer
like Halston in here?
- No, not Halston in JCPenney.
- Obviously, we're very excited about it.
We think it is a catch.
- JCPenney is trying to trade up.
But they're not quite gonna change their name
to JCPeigner or JCPeignoir.
- I believe in our country, and I like America,
and I like Americans to look good.
And I'm an American designer,
and I love the opportunity to do it.
- It's a first
between a department store chain and a major designer,
with the clothes expected to be on the racks
in the fall of '83.
- That makes a very good mix from both catalog and retail.
- This is called Halston III.
- It's called Halston III. - Why?
- Well, it's really the third stage of my career.
The first being in the millinery business,
and then in fancy clothes
and dressing all the stars and things.
And now, a larger public, dressing America, really.
- He said he would design it,
and he designed it.
And everybody, of course, wanted a piece of it.
You know, the guy who made scarves wanted Halston scarves.
The guy who made shoes wanted Halston shoes.
All that was going on.
- JCPenney is an organization that is so vast,
it's not like one person oversees the whole thing.
And so, talk about cultures, different cultures completely.
- We asked Penney executives to sum up the Halston III line
in one word.
- Profit.
- Volume.
- It's what America wants.
- Things became so tense
that Norton Simon brought in consultants
to fix the relationship.
- When I got involved in it and everything,
I thought, oh, boy, we're really in for it, Billie.
I mean, shit, this is a mother lode.
These people really need help.
Some sketches they couldn't read.
Fabrics they didn't know anything about.
Everybody would pat me on the head and say,
"Oh, listen, just leave it to us, we'll work it out.
"You just be artistical."
(woman laughing)
Well, no, no way.
The only way it'll work, let me tell you, listen to daddy.
- Yes, I'm listening.
- The only way it'll work is
to make the goddamn dress,
which, we're making the goddamn dress.
And then they go and look at the goddamn dress,
they'll see the point of difference.
I'm just trying to make it work.
- I know that.
I know that, it was-- - Desperately.
- All the plants, he's got to understand
that we've got to commit, like, eight months in advance.
We need to get the approvals and the go-aheads
and the concepts.
But he's so involved with everything,
that everything take,
on the label, the label took him months.
(vibrant electronic music)
- America has heard about it.
And we've all dreamt about it.
And now, after months of anticipation, it's here.
The Halston III Collection for 1983.
- This is an experiment, you know?
And it could succeed, it could not succeed.
(exciting music)
- Quite a show.
500 of the fashionables sat in a huge room,
dominated by a 60-foot whale hanging down from the ceiling.
People didn't know where to cry bravo or thar she blows.
- This has been probably the most challenging and gratifying
fashion exercise in my career.
- He did really give a lot to it.
I mean, he was really taking it seriously.
He did a really well-conceived line.
- Gosh, we had about 26 models in there.
The clothes looked spectacular.
It was perfect for that audience.
And everybody looked fabulous, and very good reviews.
And the show was very successful, very.
(audience applauding)
- I'm telling him how great his show was.
And I knew he was behind it.
- I love your board of directors,
wanting to go out and buy it right away. (laughing)
That's great.
- Well, we'll have a lot more great showings.
- You know, I think so.
- It's the first of many to come.
- No, I'm very proud of it.
It's wonderful, a wonderful thing.
(audience applauding)
- They had a big flag out at the museum
when they had the show.
And Ira Neimark, who was the President of Bergdorf-Goodman,
and Jackie, his wife, were coming home from dinner,
and they saw this Halston flag.
He called his senior merchandising
manager that night
at home, and she called me at home
and said he wants everything out of the store.
The fragrance, the ready-to-wear, everything.
He doesn't want anything to do with Halston.
(ominous music)
- Didn't you run into some trouble with Bergdorf,
who was the first place you had a boutique?
- Oh, not at all.
No, I don't think so.
You know, Bergdorf, you know, I wish them well.
I started my career at Bergdorf
and helped to make Bergdorf famous.
But Bergdorf is a rather small account
compared to all America.
- He was very upset.
He didn't understand it.
Also, shocked over the fact that
that could happen that quickly.
- Did Bergdorf-Goodman drop your line
because you went to Penney's?
- They, I think, felt threatened.
But I think there's a way out of it.
- Your connection to Bergdorf is a very important,
in terms of, wasn't that the first to give you--
- I helped to make Bergdorf.
- He stepped out of the norm.
And people like their boundaries
that are set between them and those.
- The fancy-shmancy guys are saying
that undermines your elegant, chic hoi polloi.
- Oh, it doesn't.
My business is very good.
You know, if one store more or less doesn't like it,
I mean, you know, I'm sorry.
- Yeah, but you can't-- - I tried my best.
- And then I started getting all kinds of calls
from presidents of the stores all over the United States,
and merchandising managers, cutting back on orders.
It was pure hell after that.
He realized that he had done the wrong thing.
- You know, the press could be mean.
They were not supporting him.
That seemed odd to me.
It just seemed like a gang.
One person misbehaves,
and then everybody's bullying this one person.
- Clearly, the purpose was to strengthen Penney's position
as a supplier of fashionable merchandise.
- Good.
- Okay, fine, that's a diplomatic answer.
- I guess you got what you need.
- Oh, absolutely.
- You can cut out and chop away
and do what you need, okay. - Oh, no--
- The JCPenney thing became so enormous a problem,
that the distance between us became too great.
He wanted me to leave,
but he didn't want to say he wanted me to leave.
He wanted to make things so unpleasant that I would leave.
I pushed him too hard.
I pushed too many licenses down on him.
(dramatic music)
- Things got out of control, and I started not to feel well.
So I went to the doctor, and he said,
"You have the beginning of an ulcer."
And it was from the stress.
I just got to the point where I couldn't deal with it.
And had to leave.
I hated to leave.
I loved Halston, but I had to get out.
- I saw him frustrated, and like,
"How can this thing come into my life?"
And I said, well, maybe you have to drop the whole thing
and come with me, and get outta here.
We'll just get a boat, you'll take a break.
And he'd say, "I can't go." (sniffles)
- They say that when it rains, it pours.
Well, a perfect storm was about to happen
when his good friend David Mahoney
threw him into the belly of the whale.
(audio screeching)
- The day before the JCPenney show,
David made an offer to buy Norton Simon.
(gentle instrumental music)
He was gonna take it private,
and he could make an awful lot of money doing that.
- Takeover mania in America.
Huge corporations are gobbling one another
at a rate unmatched in history.
- But Esmark came along out of the blue.
(bell ringing)
They made an outside bid that was better than David's
and won the battle.
- I don't know how Halston felt,
because after Norton Simon sold him,
David Mahoney was, you know, not there.
- You cannot expect other people
to be interested in your welfare all the time.
It's unfair, and it's illogical.
So therefore, you'd better take care of your own instincts
and your own efforts.
- Dog eat dog, look out for yourself,
or is that what you mean?
- Well, no, I really don't mean that,
although that's part of it, Jane.
- You know how business is.
You know how money is, you know how that is.
It's the pollution in the air.
- Esmark wasn't really in the fashion business.
Except for maybe.
- Feeling smashing, or the height of fashion?
Playtex once and you'll Playtex for keeps.
For comfort to please you.
- So Halston was put under Joel Smilow,
one of America's toughest bosses,
according to Fortune Magazine.
- This is a little teeny company.
You know, sort of a flyspeck.
And so, think of it,
if supposing you owned the New York Yankees,
and you also owned a class D farm's team
in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
How much time would you spend
with your Bethlehem, Pennsylvania farm team?
(jazz noir music)
- In 1983, my uncle asked me to come to dinner
while I was here.
I had recently graduated from college.
I was very green.
And he dropped the bomb on me.
He said, "Well, would you like to work for me?"
And I just sort of did a somersault and said,
okay, I would love to work for you.
When do I start?
I think maybe he wanted to bring in a family member
who he could trust 100%.
There was a new manager there from Esmark
who had just come on.
Do I have to say his name? (chuckles)
- You don't wanna say his name?
- No.
(jazz noir music)
- My first day at Halston was interesting.
I never seen anything quite like it.
Here, I'm the kid from Brooklyn, right?
Yet got into this world of Halston's
castle, Olympic Tower.
Look, Ma, I'm on television.
- It's about time.
- There was a kind of a pinkie throw, everywhere you went.
Halston was a little bit Hollywood, in my parlance.
But I thought we hit it off.
(guests chattering)
- You'd never think Carl ever be with Halston.
I mean, physically, mentally, anything.
But when Carl came in, in a very strange way,
Halston liked him a lot.
- He kept saying,
"I've never had the right kind of management.
"And that's part of our problem."
And he gives me a kiss on the forehead.
It was wonderful.
And then he says, "You're now the king."
And he made, with his own hands,
the crown that he gave me.
(jazz noir music)
- Halston, I think, honestly believed
that Carl Epstein was going to mediate with big business.
But I remember thinking to myself,
well, there are two men in this room.
But there's only one king at Halston Enterprises.
(speaking in foreign language)
- Voila. (chuckling)
I thought, hey, this is fun.
Clothes had to be made for me similar to what he wears.
Oh, my wife, my kids are getting all these clothes.
And then one day, he introduces me to Liza Minnelli.
I said, you know, this is, to hell with the business.
This is great.
You know, this is the way to live.
- We had budget meetings and, apparently,
theirs was a disaster.
Carl was not doing what we agreed to.
I'm at the top,
and I don't care what's happening in the engine room.
I know the engine isn't running.
And it wasn't.
Turn this into a brand.
Turn this into something we can handle,
and stop having it be this airy-fairy kind of,
I work when I want to, I'm not inspired, I'm an artist
kind of thing.
- I read all the personnel files,
and I had my rude awakening.
D. D. Ryan, I have to laugh.
Halston said, "Well, she's the resident geisha."
Bill Dugan was another one.
He said, "Well, he amuses me."
And then he had Victor Hugo.
I'll never forget once, he called me, frantic,
Victor Hugo was gonna kill him.
- Victor held the entire office captive for several hours.
He was kind of like a mad dog.
- Probably shocking to Carl, because I don't think Carl
was in the habit of taking drugs, period.
Except, you know, Pepto-Bismol.
- I just decided to duck out and go to the Top of the Sixes
and have some gin and tonics.
- It was a crazy never-never land.
Then, I checked all the expense stuff.
And that blew my mind.
The flowers.
(jazz noir music)
- Carl had me in to talk to me about
what was being spent on the flower budget.
And I said,
yes, I know what's being spent on the flower budget, Carl.
I'm writing up the bills myself.
- Esmark believed you could have plastic plants
instead of orchid plants.
They're plants.
- Entertainment, which was enormous.
The kitchen cost.
Example, they would prepare a meal for him
while he's in Montauk, and put it on a private plane,
fly it to Montauk, and deliver it to Halston's house.
And that was a company expense?
That meal must have cost $2,000.
- (laughing) It was '80s.
- Martha Graham was honored in Paris last night.
She was presented with the Cross of the Chevalier
of the Legion of Honor.
- The honeymoon ended when he was going to go to Paris
with Martha Graham.
He's gonna take his staff with him.
We calculated the cost of doing that.
And just the workroom, it was 125,000.
So I then told Halston, you can't do it.
Halston was so incensed.
"How dare you say no to me?"
It was like Jekyll and Hyde.
Suddenly Mr. Hyde came out.
From then on, I was the enemy.
- Carl, every morning, would put little sticky notes
on Halston's table about what had to happen today,
or what things were gonna be taken away.
And he didn't like it.
- We need to do this, we need to do that.
And it was just like, you're bossing him around?
Like, no one does that.
- It was a big struggle.
And it got worse and worse,
and he started coming in later and later
so he wouldn't have to deal with seeing those people.
- Be careful, it's a little dark here, hold on.
History is filled with wars.
But you have to understand the difference
between strategy and tactics.
Strategy is the art of war.
Tactics is the art of battle.
The only real battle you must never lose is the last one.
(ominous music)
- There was rumor that a junior designer was coming in
to help with the JCPenney, and just huge workload.
- In the middle of February, picked up the phone,
and this very deep voice said, "John Ridge, this is Halston."
And he said, "Can you come see me?"
So of course, I did.
And it turned out that it wasn't really an interview.
It was, "When can you start?"
And I think he just needed to know there was one head,
two arms, and that I knew who Charles James was.
- Probably after a month, I went to Carl and said,
I'm leaving, this is just an impossible situation.
We were there until eight, nine.
We never knew when we were leaving.
I can't be responsible for what the workroom cost.
And Carl said to me,
"Don't leave, things are going to change."
(jazz noir music)
- There was something called the Werner Report.
But it was so hush hush, I didn't see it
until probably seven or eight months after I was there.
When I read it,
it dawned on me that everything was tactical.
They were gonna solve their problem
by how we train the staff,
how we make the staff unafraid of Halston.
How they would learn to cope with Halston and his tirades.
Mahoney's attitude was,
we are not gonna try to control Halston.
My strategy was going back to square one.
Sometimes the kindest thing in the world you can do is
to say no to somebody.
He started coming in at four o'clock in the afternoon,
and he wants the workroom to wait for him
to come in at that time.
I told him, it's not gonna happen.
They're gonna leave at five o'clock, period, done, over.
In the final analysis,
he is like me and everybody else in that place,
an employee.
- Carl was answerable.
And, you know, it's all about the bottom line.
- That's right, we knew that.
- I suppose he was there to just slowly push Halston out.
They had the brand.
Halston was the diva designer
that they didn't necessarily need anymore.
Halston started taking legal counsel.
- When I first met him, he was quite distraught.
He was so frustrated and so angry
he had trouble completing sentences and thoughts.
Suddenly he was cast adrift.
Well, I guess I can best put it the way Halston put it,
that the folks from Planet Tampon landed
on Planet Halston.
(dramatic music)
- I'm going to pass this back and forth
like this. - Okay, all right.
- You don't have to worry about.
- I saw him tired at times.
I thought he was really tired.
- One time I came in,
and I think he might have had a panic session.
He just seemed very stressed.
And I said, can I do anything?
He said, "No, just sit here.
"Just sit here."
And we sat there for, like, 30 minutes.
Wow, that's new.
- Halston never asked me what I thought of his collection.
This time, he asked me what I thought of his collection.
And, honestly, it was like someone had punched me
in my stomach, because I knew that he was feeling
not as strong as he had been.
And it made me sad.
- If you lived in another epoch
in another time in another city, could you pick it for me?
- Oh, no way.
I like right now.
And tomorrow's going to be better,
and next week is going to be better.
No, no, no, I'm the all-time optimist.
No, I like right now.
- The problem was simply drugs.
He had gone way too far.
- I don't do tuxedos.
- He was out of control.
Out of control was symmetrical with Esmark taking over.
So you tell me which is the chicken and which is the egg.
- Some time in that spring, Liza went to Betty Ford.
And Halston said, "It's great that things like this exist
"for those who need them.
"Of course, the rest of us
"have to get on and earn a living."
- Very hard to do an interview about your best friend,
especially if what's popular in that day and age
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.
I refuse.
(audience applauding)
- In June, he had summer to do for JCPenney,
Which was way late at that point.
- Halston cooled off.
He don't want do JCPenney anymore.
I don't know why,
but that's when everything went upside-down.
(dramatic music)
- I think he thought that if he went on strike
and didn't design the collections
that he had some power over the situation, you know.
- I'm getting calls from JCPenney saying,
"Where are our products?
"Where are the designs?
"He hasn't approved them."
And whether he was doing that to get revenge on Carl,
or whether he was doing it because he was doped up,
it wasn't happening.
- They were very frustrated
because they couldn't get sketches from Halston.
So one day, I drew them a jacket
'cause they had to have a jacket,
and Halston wasn't there,
and I, well, he was not too happy
that I'd given them a sketch.
But Penney's was very happy about it.
And I think that they went away viewing me as a source
that they could turn to and get something.
And that was kind of the beginning
of my personal relationship with Penney's.
- It is inappropriate
to have John Ridge involved in areas
which do not fall under his responsibilities,
signed Halston.
To John Ridge from Carl Epstein.
Please keep up the good work.
- Carl was hell-bent on isolating Halston.
Halston felt that he could no longer work with Carl.
All he was good at was destroying.
We decided the best thing for Halston
would be to go to Montauk
and give everybody a chance to take a deep breath.
We thought that there would be a deep breath taken also
on the part of the Esmark people.
Turned out not to be the case.
(jazz noir music)
- Carl started cleaning house.
D. D. Ryan, Bill Dugan.
- I was fired.
- May I have your attention, please?
- They couldn't touch me
because he still had an office there
and I was still his secretary.
I remember him calling me.
Carl held a meeting in front of all the employees
at Halston Enterprises.
He said that it would no longer be a one-man show.
John David Ridge was promoted
and would be in charge of the design.
He is livid.
"It's my name on the label.
"How dare you?"
- It was his company, his people,
his workers, everything.
So, we went back
and it unraveled into a very unpleasant scenario.
- It was like having two chefs in the kitchen.
Everybody was saying, well, let's divide
the space up there,
and this half is Halston
and this other half is Halston III with John Ridge.
- At some point, I said no.
No, you can get someone else to do it, but I'm not going.
I knew, at this point, I knew Halston pretty well, the man.
- There was a lot of angst going on.
And so, I had my first meeting with Roy.
"Yes, Bregman, what can I do for you?"
And I'd say, well, Roy, that was the beginning. (laughing)
He was talking about going into another business.
That's why I started calling him Roy.
I said, you don't own your name, pal.
Read the small print.
We own your name.
(dramatic music)
- This was all blowing up.
They said to me, "I want you to go in and talk to him."
I was there that morning, too, we were sitting, he and I,
in his office, till about one, 1:30 in the morning.
And he said to me, "We can do this."
I said, we can do what?
He said, "We can take this over
"and get it away from the corporation
"and run it as an."
I said, Halston, it would never work.
Where is this money gonna come from?
I said, do you know how much money you spend?
And how luxurious.
I said, just take a look around.
You've had the biggest and the best.
And this kind of money is not gonna be found again.
- They requested, and I put that in quotation marks,
that I not be present at the meeting.
I'm sitting in my office,
and I felt like having a cup of tea.
So I thought I'd go into the kitchen.
I go to the door, put my key in the lock,
key is not working.
I couldn't understand, why the key?
So I run around to the front door.
And there's a guy working on the door there, a locksmith.
He's changing the locks.
I said, who hired you?
- Mr. Halston.
- I stormed into that meeting, and I just blew my top.
Even his lawyer was shocked.
- (laughing) No, Halston didn't change the locks.
He was locked out.
Carl admitted he changed the locks.
- Job is done, Mr. Epstein.
- You actually admitted it.
- I admitted it?
- In Women's Wear Daily, several months later.
When there was a story about trouble at the Olympic Tower.
- I said, look, that's it, I've had it.
You know, I don't wanna have to think about
somebody changing the locks.
Either he goes or I go.
- When Epstein gave 'em the signal, they said,
"We're done, you're done."
And Halston was out.
- It was weird.
It was surreal that this coup d'etat happened so quickly.
- I was very heartbroken for him.
He was like a man without a country.
The Halston name,
that was the most important thing in his entire life,
could be used by that corporation
without his consent.
- Halston Enterprises and Organization MINE,
a symbolic signing of the licensing agreement for Mexico.
(speaking in foreign language) (vibrant music)
- Hola.
♪ Halston ♪
(dramatic music)
- Week after week, month after month,
he realized that he didn't have much clout anymore
with the company.
- When one comes in to make a company healthy,
it depends how you define health.
- People were suddenly at peace,
had comfortable jobs, were not being shouted at.
- We had not much to do.
No movie star.
No celebrity.
JCPenney, and that's it.
And not even, because at one point
they used to do everything in China.
We just would send the pattern,
and they used to make everything there.
- Carl told me one day
that he was gonna sell off all the samples.
- That was his record that should be in a museum,
and they decided to sell those important pieces
for 25 bucks, 50 bucks apiece.
- But it was just stuff sitting there,
year after year, doing nothing.
- Some pieces went here, some pieces went there.
But the mother lode of it is gone, eliminated, erased.
It was hostile.
- There was nothing personal about it.
If you want to call something personal,
I really didn't give a damn
what Halston's reaction would be.
We were beyond that.
- Why not give it to a museum?
- And then there was a bookcase
full of video tapes of the shows.
Said to Carl, well, I want these tapes.
He said, "No, Halston has copies."
(static crackling) (audio screeching)
(video beeping) - How do you do?
I'm Halston.
- Carl said he was gonna erase them
and sell the blanks to the next tenant.
(models cheering and laughing)
- Everyone thinks you're an overnight success.
I had worked very hard for 20 years.
This is.
♪ Happy birthday to me ♪
(video humming) (static crackling)
(audio screeching)
- There is no home in Iowa, you see.
(static hissing)
- I really wanted to show this photo.
So, my grandparents, this is Hallie Mae and James Edward.
(gentle guitar music)
They were working class.
My grandmother, I'm not sure, made it past ninth grade.
They had four children.
My father first.
And then Roy Halston Frowick came along in 1932.
You know, times were tough.
Grew up in the Depression era.
Halston and my father weren't close with their father.
They loved him, but he had a temper.
My grandmother took him under her wing
and was sort of protecting him.
She was a sweet, sweet, soft-spoken, very mellow woman,
and you just felt so calm around her.
When she passed away, Halston was in the middle of JCPenney,
but he didn't tell them anything.
He just said he had to leave.
He suffered silently.
Halston wasn't estranged from his family per se,
it's just that the family's very conservative.
He felt that they wouldn't understand his lifestyle
with Victor there, and although he was constantly trying
to get him out of his life, and I was there.
And eventually he did.
I kept trying to tell him to reconnect with his siblings,
telling him, they're not gonna judge you.
The family's there for you.
And at a certain point,
I helped him organize the first family reunion in Montauk.
He let his hair down
and was the brother that he was 40 years prior.
But he was who he was, so he had to plan it,
every moment of it.
They got all white sweat suits for one event,
and they got all Army uniforms for the safari.
- He loved life and you could tell that about him.
You could tell.
- I think he just wanted, maybe to slow down a little.
Being a regular person.
Here, he was Halston.
But I think inside, he was, you know, Roy.
- It came to a point where he said,
"I'm not gonna be able to go back to designing,
"so you need to kind of pursue your own life."
You know, he didn't want to hold me back.
So I decided to move to California.
(gentle guitar music)
It was a difficult decision to make.
But I bought a car
and told him I wanted to take him for a drive
up the Hudson River to blow off the stink.
It was a beautiful, sunny Sunday.
And at certain point, through the chatter, he said,
"Well, I have to tell you something."
And he revealed to me at that point
that he was sick with HIV.
And I just shut down and started freaking out.
And he said, "It's not a death sentence."
So I did the stiff upper lip thing,
'cause he didn't like people to cry,
and just went along with it like,
no, it's not a death sentence, no.
But you have to remember,
so many people were getting sick in those days.
- The fashion industry here is being devastated by AIDS.
- When Perry Ellis died in 1986,
his company denied it was AIDS-related.
- There is no drug, there is no treatment,
there's no vaccine, there's no prevention, there is no cure.
- No one was beating it.
I was terrified.
I was scared for him.
- I didn't wanna leave.
I kept asking him and asking him,
and even the last day I said, I can stay here.
I can live here, I can be your nurse, I can take you,
I can get your stuff if you don't want to go out.
And he was like, "No, I don't want you to do that."
So I left.
- He handled it the way he had to handle it.
You know, denial, and then fighting it and saying,
"No, this is not gonna take me."
And then finally realizing it had.
(solemn music)
He decided to sell the house.
(gentle piano music)
- He decided he was gonna live
his last moments of his life with his family in California.
He didn't want anybody to know,
so I didn't tell anybody until I had to tell my dad.
- He left, and he completely hid away
and didn't want anybody to see him.
- We would write him letters.
- I did not know that he was ill.
I wish I could call him now.
- That was a period of people I knew
that they will never come back.
But I remember them.
I don't regret those times.
I am alone, though.
And you are a voyeur.
- I tried to find out what was going on,
and then I heard the stories that he was in California,
driving along the coast in a convertible Rolls-Royce,
enjoying his life with his sunglasses and his hands out,
enjoying the breeze.
That's how I see him.
(epic music)
- He passed away the night of the Academy Awards, actually.
And his name was up on a television screen.
We had a beautiful ceremony,
and we played Fanfare for a Common Man.
("Fanfare for the Common Man")
Halston was a common man.
He came from nowhere.
At the end, he said, "I just wanna fade away."
But as somebody like him, he couldn't just fade away.
- The death of a great American designer.
His name was Halston.
He was only 57 when he died in California.
Yesterday he died as the result of AIDS.
- With AIDS. - The cause,
AIDS-related cancer.
- We profoundly hope that it has a positive impact
on the public in becoming increasingly aware
of this terrible problem, and doing something about it.
(upbeat music)
- Five months later,
Halston Enterprises closed its Olympic Tower headquarters.
(audio screeching)
Today, fashion is fast.
And high up above the streets, in his beloved Olympic Tower,
a private investment firm.
It's morning again in America.
- Does it look pretty much the same?
- Oh, sure it's fun and it's not fun,
and it's upbeat and downbeat and everything else, you know.
But as my mother says, it's the price you have to pay.
Thank you.
Okay?
It's a wrap. (laughing)
♪ I am for a life around the corner ♪
♪ That takes you by surprise ♪
♪ That comes leaves all you need ♪
♪ And more besides ♪
♪ I am for a life and time by numbers ♪
♪ Blast in fast and low ♪
♪ Add 'em up, account for luck ♪
♪ You never know ♪
♪ I am into friendship and plain sailing ♪
♪ Through frenzied ports o'call ♪
♪ O shake the hand to beat the band ♪
♪ With love is all ♪
♪ Or nothing to the man who wants tomorrow ♪
♪ There's one in every town ♪
♪ A crazy guy, he'd rather die ♪
♪ Than be tied down ♪
♪ I am for the man who drives the hammer ♪
♪ To rock you till the grave ♪
♪ His power drill shocks a million miles away ♪
♪ I am for the revolution's coming ♪
♪ I don't know where she's been ♪
♪ For those who dare... ♪