Simply Halston - Hardcover

Gaines, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399136126 ISBN 13: 9780399136122

Publisher: Putnam Adult, 1991

Synopsis

Chronicles the life story of Roy Halston Frowick, a poor midwesterner whose middle name became synonymous in the 1960s and 1970s with high-fashion and high-society, but who experienced business setbacks in the 1980s, then succumbed to the AIDS virus

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

A riveting tale of sex, drugs, and the pillbox hat as Gaines (Heroes and Villains, 1986) details the rise and fall of a talented designer turned disco denizen. Roy Halston Frowick moved to Chicago at age 20 from Des Moines and with the backing of his hairdresser-lover started a millinery business that quickly gained a local following. Offered a job in New York by the famous Lilly Dache, Halston soon was installed at Bergdorf's, selling hats and charming celebrity customers (including Jacqueline Kennedy, who wore his pillbox hat for the inauguration). As the 60's progressed, Halston moved over to designing ready-to-wear. His showroom became a gathering place for the famous, and his simple, elegant clothes became all the rage, until a 1972 Newsweek cover named him America's ``premier fashion designer.'' In 1973, he sold his business to Norton Simon Industries, which created an extremely successful fragrance. But as the 70's wore on, the licensing ventures languished as Halston allegedly began to use cocaine heavily, getting in to work at noon after nights at Studio 54. When Norton Simon was taken over, the Halston division was sold several times to corporations less tolerant of the designer's disregard for the bottom line, and finally Halston himself was banished from his own offices, with others producing under the Halston name. In March 1990, the designer died of AIDS. Jam-packed with sordid detail (prostitutes, anonymous sex in Central Park, a destructive long-term lover named Victor Hugo) and celebrities (Liza, Andy, Bianca): reading this is like mainlining 70's gossip. In all: a sad story of talent gone astray and a fascinating, disturbing portrait of the imaginative decadence of the disco era. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

There's a sad irony in the glitzy life of fashion designer Roy Halston Frowick, product of a Midwestern Depression childhood with an alcoholic father and the self-made "king of New York night life." Halston, whose clean-cut, all-American style was mass-marketed through J. C. Penney, was hooked on cocaine, booze and Quaaludes and had a nasty anti-Semitic streak, as portrayed here. As his fame peaked, he became increasingly paranoid, capricious and hot-tempered, according to Gaines, author of a Beatles biography ( The Love You Make ). Halston, at the height of his fame, was "almost a caricature of a sissy homosexual fashion designer, haughty and superficial," we are told. There are candid details of his coked-out Venezuelan window-dresser lover, his endless stream of call boys, business reversals, cavortings with the rich and beautiful (Andy Warhol, Liza Minnelli et al.) and his death from AIDS in 1990 at the age of 57. Alternately fawning and damning, this frantic biography has a hollow center where a man should be. Photos. First serial to Vanity Fair.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0399136126
• ISBN 13: 9780399136122
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320