Prodigiously talented, Halston reigned over fashion in the 1970s and became a household name. But everything changed in the Wall Street era. With his empire under threat, Halston took the biggest gamble of his life.
Fashion designer Halston combined talent, notoriety, and sheer fabulousness to become a legend. From humble beginnings in Des Moines, Iowa, his first brush with fame came when he designed Jackie Onassis’s famous pink pillbox hat. Whether he was popularizing hot pants, creating elegant but comfortable women’s wear, launching a perfume line, traveling with a gaggle of models to China, or having hedonistic fun with Liza Minnelli at Studio 54, Halston built a reputation and an empire—and was responsible for many iconic moments in American fashion and culture in the ’70s and ’80s.
HALSTON tells the story of a complicated man—in both his craft and his business decisions—from the mouths of those who knew the man best. Frédéric Tcheng, a great documentarian of fashion luminaries like Valentino, Diana Vreeland, and Raf Simons, takes an unconventional approach to the bio-doc by creating a narrative (starring Tavi Gevinson, a fashion icon of a different generation) through which to frame the story of this enigmatic designer, which allows Tcheng to delve deeper into this comprehensive exploration of the designer’s rise, fall, and enduring influence.