“Reviews don’t matter.” But oh, of course they do—despite the oft-repeated insistence of Halston throughout the eponymous limited Netflix series brought to us by none other than Ryan Murphy. And when it comes to reviews of this show, few could argue that Murphy didn’t do his homework, even while, as usual, taking plenty of creative license (as per usual, and for the purposes of his own stylized flair) from the already gossip rag-oriented source material, Simply Halston by Steven Gaines (the cost of the out-of-print book likely factoring into the budget for the project).
Naturally, the subject of Halston was long begging for “the Murphy treatment,” yet many critics still don’t see the point of what they call Murphy’s “flat, empty provocation.” If you have to ask “the point,” then Murphy’s work has likely never been “for you.” For while the long-running accusation is that his series conjure little more than a hollow feeling, that, in and of itself, is often the entire purpose. To reflect our star-obsessed society back to us at the same time as making us feel all the more guilty about it by entertaining us in the process. By showing us that, for as much as we love to watch the “creation” of a celebrity, we love to watch their slow demise even more. How we count on the predictable moment when a star will become washed up for continuing to be overexposed, and, of course, in “headier” days, because of drugs. Halston was no exception to that latter rule, readily going down the rabbit hole as both pressure and success mounted in the late 1970s at the height of his fame.
Created by Sharr White, with the majority of episodes written by Murphy and his go-to co-writer, Ian Brennan, Halston begins at the moment when Roy first becomes truly aware of his need to escape from small-town Indiana (even if the real life Halston grew up in Iowa before attending college in the Hoosier State). While collecting feathers for a hat to make for his mother (they conveniently leave out that he does the same for his sister, who never appears), he runs toward the house after Mother calls out to him, only to stop in his tracks when he overhears his father proceed to abuse her. While this may or may not be an embellished account of his father’s temper, this is the quintessential “gay boy” moment in determining that he must leave, go far away—expressly to a big city. But at least Roy wasn’t cliché enough to flee immediately to New York. Instead, he made a detour in Chicago, where his work as a milliner launched him into mainstream consciousness after Jackie Kennedy wore the forever iconic pillbox hat designed by Halston himself to JFK’s inauguration.
Alas, the fashion market is so fickle, especially when celebrity wives are dictating the trends at their own whims. And when Jackie ceased wearing hats circa 1968 thanks to her “awful gigantic hairdo,” Halston had to find another way to survive, to create. Attempting at first to work with Bergdorf Goodman as he always had, a failed fashion show put on for them leads to Halston’s determination that he needs to break out on his own. Secure an atelier for himself where he can dress and delight all the socialites and celebrities of New York “society.” A sort of Andy Warhol meets Truman Capote for the fashion world… and yes, Warhol would cross Halston’s path many times (with the pop artist even exposing Halston’s “seediest” moments in The Andy Warhol Diaries).
Except that Warhol could draw his own creations, whereas Halston needed a partner in crime to translate his vision onto paper. Enter the fashion illustrator that would go on to be Halston’s creative director for a decade, Joe Eula (David Pittu). It is as the two of them discuss Halston’s potential future at a nightclub that Liza Minnelli (Krysta Rodriguez) appears for a performance in her then well-known “little girl’s style.” The one Halston wanted to prove she could shake in order to become her own woman outside of Judy Garland’s shadow. It is Joe and Liza who technically form the first members of Halston’s “ragtag” gang. Followed by Joel Schumacher (Rory Culkin)—the auteur who many forget was briefly allied with Halston, at least long enough to make note of in a five-part series about the designer’s life. However, there is no evidence to suggest that Schumacher was responsible for any tie-dye chiffon dresses. That, it would seem, is yet another “Murphy flourish.” Along with casting straight actors as gay men. Ewan McGregor might have played it homo in 2009’s I Love You Phillip Morris, but that was at a time when hardly any focus was placed on the importance of casting queer actors for queer roles. While McGregor expressed some concern about the backlash that might arise from him playing a gay character now, he seemed to think that Halston’s sexuality was just “one facet” of who he was. A nice way to say, “I’m going to play this character no matter what.”
As for Darren Criss, who conveniently said he would no longer portray characters of the LGBTQIA+ community after The Assassination of Gianni Versace was completed, it’s like his version of Andrew Cunanan said: “I deserve the best!” This most certainly applies when it comes to straight actors still taking on gay roles. Ironically, McGregor would describe Halston as follows: “There are people who love him and are unbelievably loyal to this day. I was excited to play that. To go to the extremes of his temper. But behind it all—this drive, this creative drive. And this desire to be grand. Everything had to be the best.”
Though that didn’t necessarily seem to apply to the men he ended up gravitating toward. Save for Ed (Sullivan Jones), his first semi-monogamous boyfriend in the series. It is he who seems to have purer interests at heart than “Victor Hugo” a.k.a. “Victor Huge-o” a.k.a. Victor Rojas (Gian Franco Rodriguez). Halston likely ends up preferring Victor because he does not bother broaching anything like “a past”—how or why he ended up in New York, as so many gay men of the time did, fleeing from their oppressive, small-town lives just as Halston. But Ed is willing to address it with the assessment, “Men like us come here from some faraway place to invent ourselves. Make something out of nothing. I didn’t come from as far—just across the river from New Jersey—but that version of me seems very far away.” Halston’s former “Indiana husk” is not the only thing that seems removed by the early 70s, but also his own initial New York version of himself, as he starts dressing in black turtlenecks and speaking more affectedly in order to “become what he is,” in essence. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.
As he grows bigger and bigger, especially after an Americans vs. French fashion fundraiser at Versailles in November of 1973, his head grows just as large. Something Eleanor Lambert (Kelly Bishop a.k.a. “Emily Gilmore”) could already see based on his hesitancy to participate in the show in the first place. Reminding him of her diligence over the years to make America a viable contender in the chichi world of haute couture (she also invented Fashion Week and the Met Gala), he only caves after she threatens to make sure his name is never mentioned in print again. But it’s lucky for Halston that he was pushed so hard to participate despite his ego—really just a front for his deepest insecurities about not being seen as “good enough” when pitted against the likes of Givenchy and the House of Dior. That Midwestern impostor syndrome invariably shining through every so often. Incidentally, for all her pomp, Eleanor Lambert was an Indiana girl herself—proving once again that everyone in New York (even the “most influential” people) is an impostor just hoping to “pass” for as long as possible.
After the success at the Battle of Versailles, things continue to ramp up for Halston. By the time he’s reached the point of making his own perfume (though really, being told to do so by the company that takes charge of the brand, Norton Simon), he’s pushed aside any lingering self-doubt a little too much as he tells the representative from Max Factor that would distribute the fragrance, “Max Factor, everything it represents, its cheap, cellophane-wrapped chintz, is everything I was running away from.” But you can never truly run away from yourself, and when the “real” you finally catches up, no amount of drugs can undo one’s memory of that incarnation. “Halston, aren’t you from Indiana?” the Max Factor rep asks in earnest, trying to get him to remember something about his roots. But Halston has been infected with the NYC Superiority Complex as he retorts, “Was.” Like Warhol, Halston’s commitment to seeing himself as “fabulous,” as opposed to being from an unremarkable background and an unextraordinary place, leads to greater self-delusion as time wears on.
Unlike Warhol, Halston had a lot less self-control (call it the difference between a Leo and a Taurus). And, as many fellow Taureans in history have found, something happens when you keep wanting more, keep finding nothing but a void where you thought there might be satisfaction. You have to fill it—stop it up—in whatever way possible in order to ignore that it’s still there. That was the case for Halston, whose coke habit is less “habit” than it is viewed as one requiring the proverbial eight glasses of water a day. But there is no water at Halston’s new stomping ground, Studio 54. Just free-flowing dick and cocaine. More temptation to distract and catalyze an unavoidable downfall.
Key moments of this New York heyday (or night) are acknowledged loosely, like Bianca Jagger riding in on a horse at Studio 54 for her birthday party, or a dead body being discovered in the vents after the person in question—portrayed by a woman instead of a man in a tux—tried to sneak in post-being dubbed too bridge-and-tunnel for entry.
There are other “small tells” of the years as they pass, like the mention of Blaine Trump by David Mahoney’s (Bill Pullman, still kickin’) wife. A nod to indicate she already had immediate “society clout” after marrying Robert Trump in 1980. And it is this one-off name-check that also indicates just how insidious a force the Trumps have always been in the world of “wealth,” and New York City.
As we watch Halston get railed by any rough trade of his choosing, we can see what’s coming. That these are, literally, the last days of disco. Soon enough (as It’s A Sin recently covered), that ominous and since legendary headline, “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals,” is viewed by Halston… perhaps some sense of foreboding washing over him as it did many other gay men of the era, before he inevitably turns the page and pushes the thought aside. But, as the saying goes, “It is written.” There was no getting out of Halston’s eventual demise, least of all with a lover like Victor at his side, constantly leeching in the style of Paul Prenter with Freddie Mercury (another decadent gay man lost to AIDS after the 70s and 80s had their way with him).
Besides, he has greater worries to contend with, like doing the truly unthinkable: allying his name with Middle America by agreeing to peddle his wares at JCPenney when the company controlling Halston continues to hemorrhage profits. Although both Halston and Warhol might have gotten their start in department stores (hence, an unshakeable predilection for corporate-style branding), this would have been the last thing Halston ever would have imagined—or wanted—for himself. And yet, knowing that he’s being painted into a corner, with little other choice if he wants to continue designing with some modicum of control, he tells David, “Well, JCPenney is a part of the American fabric,” thereby becoming part of the very fabric he tried to run away from: ordinary, two-bit, tasteless. In short, his worst fear realized. Thus, is it any wonder he retreats further into the haze of drugs and orchids?
At the same time, of course, this would be yet another manner in which Halston actually blazed a trail in fashion, for it would become the norm for “high-end” brands to debase themselves not only in department stores, but also other retail outlets like H&M.
Possibly the most telling aspect of Halston’s life was that, for as “New York” as he had branded himself, becoming one of many “fixtures” of the era that present-day residents continue to romanticize in order to justify remaining in New York Shitty, he could not bring himself to die there. Aware of his fate being sealed with a positive diagnosis for HIV/AIDS, he decided to abscond to California, spending the remaining year-ish of his life driving up and down the coast before dying in San Francisco. What the series fails to mention is that he still had relatives he was close to in the Golden State, which was part of the draw for heading West, where his brother and sister, Bob Frowick and Sue Hopkins, both lived with their families.
Maybe something with a cheesier ending to this effect involving such family members might have better won over the “critics” (the title of the final episode, to boot). Rather than reveal some appreciation for Murphy & co.’s re-creation of a kind of excess we can only dream of now, critics would rather say that “the series’ glib treatment of the legendary designer’s interior life yields a lot of style with little substance.” Wasn’t that, in the end, how critics summed up Halston himself? “A lot of style with little substance”? And wasn’t that what people loved most about the 70s and 80s in general?
loved this! 🤩