Roy Halston Frowick

Roy Halston Frowick (born April 23, 1932 in Des Moines , Iowa , † March 26, 1990 in San Francisco , California ), known under the name Halston , was an American fashion designer .

Halston achieved almost cult status as a fashion designer in the USA in the 1960s and 70s. From 1960 onwards he achieved great fame as a hat maker with the so-called pillbox hat for Jacqueline Kennedy , before expanding his range to include women's fashion and later, under license, men's fashion, accessories and perfume from the late 1960s . His elegant long dresses or copies of his style were popular items in well-known nightclubs and discos of the 1970s, such as Studio 54 in New York City . After periods of enormous economic success, the Halston brand faded from the end of the 1980s and increasingly with the death of the company's founder, but still exists and has been run under new management with its own stores in the USA since 2011.

Life and business

Frowick was born in Des Moines , Iowa , in April 1932 . After graduating from Bosse High School in Evansville , Indiana , in 1950, Frowick studied at Indiana University. When his family moved to Chicago , he dropped out, took an evening class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and worked as a window dresser in Chicago. From 1952 he created hats for women and sold them in the hairdressing salon of his partner at the time. Frowick first gained notoriety through an article in the Chicago Daily News , which reported on his hat creations. In 1957 Frowick opened his first hat store of his own, Boulevard Salon , on the North Michigan Avenue shopping street. It was then that he adopted his middle name, Halston, as a professional trademark.

Pillbox hat for Jackie Kennedy

The end of 1957 went Frowick to New York City , where he worked for the milliner Lilly roof worked and made friends with the fashion designer Charles James, who his mentor should be. A year later, Halston got a job as a milliner at the exclusive New York fashion store Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan . Frowick achieved national fame for his creation of the pillbox hat , which Jacqueline Kennedy wore when her husband, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated in 1961 . Jackie Kennedy made Halston her private hat designer in the episode.

In 1966, Halston started a 25-piece collection of women's fashion, which has developed so successfully over the years that the American magazine Newsweek named Halston in 1972 the number 1 fashion designer of all America. In 1968 he founded his company Halston Limited and opened an elegant fashion salon on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, which served as a venue for exclusive invitations in the evenings. Halston's fashion designs, which corresponded to the international jet set style of the time, were worn by Bianca Jagger , Liza Minnelli , Anjelica Huston , Lauren Bacall , Babe Paley and Elizabeth Taylor , among others, in the 1960s and 1970s . Andy Warhol was one of Halston's friends. Since his celebrity customers wanted made -to- measure garments, Halston launched a handcrafted haute couture collection in the top price segment in addition to his high-priced prêt-à-porter fashion line . Halston's style was considered typically American and comprised - similar to his colleague Calvin Klein's later - elegant, minimalist designs made of fine materials that flattered the customer's body. Long, narrow dresses or airy pantsuits made of silk, flowing scarves made of chiffon or caftans made of wafer-thin suede were Halston classics.

In 1973 Halston sold his business to conglomerate Norton Simon, Inc. for approximately $ 12 million in shares and remained with the company as managing director and chief designer. Licenses have been granted for the Halston range, which now includes women's fashion, men's fashion, home textiles, accessories, luggage and cosmetics. The period up to the early 1980s is considered to be the heyday of the Halston brand. Halston fashion sold extremely successfully and the Halston perfume, in a bottle designed by Elsa Peretti , was a box-office hit. In 1978, Halston moved his design studio to spacious, minimalist business premises in the Olympic Tower . In 1983 Norton Simon, and with it Halston, was bought by the conglomerate Esmark, which was taken over by Beatrice Foods in 1984 . During this time, Halston designed, in addition to his high-priced designs, in collaboration with the US retailer JC Penney, a low-priced clothing line for the mass market, for which the established fashion world despised him. In 1983 Esmark resigned Halston from all positions in his own company after differences over management. The haute couture line was abandoned. In 1986 Revlon bought the Halston brand.

Frowick was known for his excessive lifestyle including substance abuse and was a well-known figure in New York nightlife of the 1960s and 70s with his celebrity friends. He lived openly gay in New York City . In 1990 Frowick died of complications from AIDS in San Francisco , California , at the age of 57 .

The Halston brand after Halston

In 1991, the cosmetics group Borghese took over the Halston company and until the end of the 1990s struggled to keep the once glamorous brand alive. In 1996 the Halston fashion license was given to the fashion manufacturer Tropic Tex International , who used the well-known fashion designer Randolph Duke to revive the brand, which was ultimately unsuccessful. In 1998 the holding company Catterton Partners bought the company and sold it to the textile manufacturer Neema Clothing a year later . Over the years, the chief designers for the Halston brand, which was not very successful at the time, included Kevan Hall, Craig Natiello (previously with Bill Blass ), Piyawat Pattanapuckdee (previously with Anne Klein ) and Bradley Bayou. In 2007, film producer Harvey Weinstein took over the Halston brand with Hilco Consumer Capital and, with the support of Jimmy Choo manager Tamara Mellon and stylist Rachel Zoe, appointed former Versace designer Marco Zanini as a fashion designer at Halston. Zoe and Zanini left the company in 2008. Under the new chief designer Marios Schwab, the second line Halston Heritage was launched, under whose name Halston classics adapted to modern times were reissued. In 2009, the actress Sarah Jessica Parker was appointed managing director and chief designer of Halston Heritage . Internal differences over the brand's strategic direction led Weinstein, Mellon, Schwab and Parker to leave the financially troubled Halston company in 2011. The main Halston line has been put on hold. The fall / winter 2011 fashion show held at New York Fashion Week in February 2011 was the label's last so far.

Halston today

The former managing director of the BCBG Max Azria Group fashion group, Ben Malka, took over Halston with his own capital and business partners in mid-2011. Malka moved the company headquarters from New York to Los Angeles , appointed former BCBG designer Marie Mazelis as a fashion designer for Halston and has concentrated ever since to the second line Halston Heritage in the upper middle price segment. By the end of 2013, seven Halston stores had opened in the USA - including in Manhattan (2 ×) and California (4 ×) - and a global online shop; further shops are planned according to the company. At the end of 2014, Malka sold the newly founded sub-brands H by Halston (shoes) and H Halston (clothing line) to the New York company Xcel Brands for around 27.7 million US dollars.

Web links

• Halston.com
• Time: Fashion: Dressed To Kill - and Die, 1990

Individual evidence

1. ↑ January Magazine: As Good As the People He Dressed
2. ↑ ContactMusic: Alec Baldwin - Alec's gay role
3. ↑ Adherents: The Gay 100 A Ranking of the Most Influential Gay Men and Lesbians, Past and Present
4. ↑ Time: Fashion: Dressed To Kill - and Die, 1990
5. ↑ Halston design house gets major alteration under new owner , latimes.com, September 20, 2012
6. ↑ Xcel Brands Acquires H by Halston & H Halston Brands , globalnewswire.com, December 23, 2014