Halston 10 Personal Facts, Biography, Wiki
American fashion designer Born: April 23, 1932, Des Moines, Iowa, United States Died: March 26, 1990, San Francisco, California, United States Full name: Roy Halston Frowick Label(s): Halston Limited; Halston III; Halston IV Education: Benjamin Bosse High School Parents: Hallie Frowick, James Frowick The designer Roy Halston Frowick (1932-1990) was born in Des Moines, Iowa, and began his career as a milliner. He subsequently rose to become one of the most important American designers of the 1970s, whose influence was still being felt into the twenty-first century. While studying fashion illustration at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1952, Halston began designing hats in his spare time. Eventually, he started to sell his designs at André Basil’s hair salon at the Ambassador Hotel. Halston moved to New York City in 1958 to design hats for the legendary milliner Lilly Daché and then began working in the custom millinery salon of the prestigious retailer Bergdorf Goodman in 1959. While there, he designed the famous pillbox hat worn by the First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy for the 1961 presidential inauguration of her husband, John F. Kennedy.
Halston 10 Pics, Photos, Pictures
Halston 10 Fast Facts, Biography, Wiki
Halston’s on-again off-again lover was Venezuelan-born artist Victor Hugo. The two met while Hugo was working as a make up artist in 1972. The two began a relationship and Hugo lived on and off in Halston’s home. Halston soon hired Hugo to work as his window dresser. Their on-and-off relationship lasted a little over ten years. According to The New York Times, Halston was known to have had an affair with fashion designer Luis Estevez. Moving beyond hats, Halston went on to design his first clothing collection for Bergdorf Goodman in June 1966. Two years later he left the retailer to form his own company, Halston Ltd. In December of 1968 Halston showed his first namesake collection in his new Angelo Donghia-designed showroom at 33 East Sixty-Eighth Street in New York City. As his business grew, Halston took over the entire building, creating a retail boutique in 1972 that took up three floors of the building, with each floor selling a different collection (and at a different price point). Later that year a ready-to-wear company, Halston Originals, was formed with two partners and headquartered on New York’s Seventh Avenue. In a first-of-its-kind deal for a fashion designer, Halston and his partners sold both the Halston businesses and the Halston trademark to Norton Simon Industries (NSI), a large multibrand corporation, in 1973. Halston’s success soared during the mid-1970s, and so did his fame. An article in Esquire magazine asked the question: “Will Halston take over the world?” (p. 69). As the success continued, NSI started signing a multitude of licensees-thirty existed at one point. In 1978 the company moved its design studio to a spacious venue on the twenty-first floor of the Olympic Tower at Fifty-first Street and Fifth Avenue. With the bigger space once again came an increased workload. Eventually, Halston was designing four ready-to-wear, four sportswear, and two made-to-order collections per year. All this was in addition to furs, shoes, swimwear, robes, intimate apparel, men’s wear, luggage, and uniforms for both Avis Rent A Car System and Braniff Airline employees. Halston also continued to design costumes for his celebrity friends, including the performer Liza Minnelli, and for Martha Graham’s dance company. By the early 1980s, however, Halston’s influence was waning, and his social life began to garner more attention than his fashions. The beginning of the end, according to many, came when, in 1982, Halston signed a multimillion dollar deal with the J. C. Penney discount chain to create products under the Halston label. Many prestigious retailers voiced concern about the deal, and Bergdorf Goodman dropped the designer’s ready-to-wear line from their store.
