Review: Halston

by Andrew Parker

Halston is a flashy, stylish, decently entertaining, but also resoundingly hollow documentary about a high fashion icon who valued his privacy and even in death refuses to be overly analysed. While French documentarian Frédéric Tcheng was previously able to make fascinating biographies of Christian Dior and Diana Vreeland, he seems to have met his match when talking about the uncompromising and obstinate Roy Halston Frowick, resulting in a documentary that covers the rise and fall of one of fashion’s most famous and infamous mononyms without getting to know much about the film’s subject as a human being. One suspects that Halston would be over the moon about such an obtuse and respectful depiction, but it’s hard to think that audiences at large will be just as fulfilled.

Born in Des Moines, Iowa, Halston moved to New York City where he started his career as a milliner for Bergdorf Goodman, eventually becoming the head designer in his department. But becoming known as the man who put the pillbox hat onto the head of Jackie Kennedy wasn’t enough for the trendsetting and increasingly popular Halston, who went out on his own in the 1960s amid the rise of more big name designers getting into the ready-to-wear fashion industry. He made a killing in cosmetics, fragrances, hot pants, ultrasuede, and accessories, and his clothing was seen on red carpets at every major social event and awards show. He was one of the first American designers ever allowed to showcase their work in Paris. His company was so large that it was purchased by one of America’s largest corporate conglomerates, Norton Simon, and eventually he’d become the first designer to allow his clothes to be mass produced and sold at a major department store chain. He had it all for awhile, but his particular style of micromanaging, hard partying lifestyle, and a complete lack of empathy or people skills would lead to his downfall in the 1980s.

Tcheng frames Halston like a mystery, peppering interstitials throughout the film where actress and writer Tavi Gevinson plays an investigator looking into the lost, undocumented gaps in the designer’s life. It makes sense from a storytelling perspective when one considers that his failed business partnership led to most of Halston’s archives, designs, and prototypes either being destroyed or sold off for pennies on the dollar by his previous corporate overlords. Although there are plenty of archival interviews with Halston still readily available and found, a lot of the stories and materials that built his empire are lost forever. Unfortunately, one gets the sense that this framing device isn’t particular necessary, and Halston would still be a frustrating enigma to try and get a handle on if he were alive today.

When it comes to the business details and learning how Halston ran day-to-day operations, Tcheng has a lot to work with. No company that made as much money and got as the wealth of press that Halston’s did would be lacking in that department. Similarly, there are plenty of stories about Halston partying at Studio 54 and rubbing elbows with the cultural elites of his time, like Andy Warhol, Elsa Peretti, and Liza Minnelli (the latter of whom gives a new interview for the film, but says very little out of respect for her departed friend). New interviews with some of his production heads, members of his omnipresent stable of models that flanked Halston at all times, frustrated corporate partners, and even filmmaker Joel Schumacher (who was a close friend and longtime co-worker) do their best to fill in the details about who Tcheng’s subject was a person, but answers remain unattainable.

In all of his interviews that are seen in the documentary, Halston shoots down any attempts by journalists to ask personal questions. To Halston, the past wasn’t something to be talked about, and all that mattered was today and tomorrow. To that effect, the stories shared throughout Halston only speak to the man’s passion to be the best and the anger people incurred if they ever dared to question his genius. Halston mentions that he was gay, but outside of an archival audio interview with former boyfriend Victor Hugo, that’s all there is to say about his personal relationships. Other archival audio and video interviews (and even some of the new ones conducted by Tcheng) paint a rather unflattering picture of a man who seems like he was a tyrant. Like many problematic artists, some people were willing to look past his abusive practices and see his genius, while others, most notably late fashion illustrator Joe Eula, are willing to pour heavy amounts of gasoline onto an already burning pile of bad feelings.

But it’s clear that Tcheng wants Halston to function more as a fluff piece than a takedown, even if he doesn’t have a lot of evidence to back up such an approach. Whenever someone brings up something nasty that Halston did, Tcheng will immediately cut to one of his subject’s many successes. When Halston’s career starts to decline, Tcheng doesn’t shy away from painting the designer as the architect of his own demise, but the film pivots in a weirdly specific direction to talk about a story of brand mismanagement instead of about the person who committed said mismanagement on a personal level. Late in the film, Halston somewhat disingenuously (but not totally without cause) paints its subject’s corporate handlers as villains. It’s also at this point where Tcheng has been saving all that he knows about Halston’s earliest years before becoming a success in hopes of ending the movie on a cathartic, sympathetic note.

It doesn’t work at all and the film suffers on the whole as a result. No matter how unfair it was that Halston had his livelihood stripped away from him in a hostile takeover of his company, Tcheng doesn’t do enough to make viewers shake the feeling that the film’s subject was kind of a monster to everyone who worked for him at the height of his success. Halston tries to become a “sympathy for the devil” sort of narrative, but without any personal details beyond painting its subject as a successful, egotistical millionaire, the approach doesn’t stick. There’s no mystery behind Halston no matter how hard Tcheng tries to manufacture one. Halston was an unapologetic asshole, and since he didn’t want to speak about how he became one in his own words while he was still with us, there’s not much reason to care about his legacy. For a biography, it’s a highly unfashionable look that’s way too safe to talk about anything beyond the brand on the label.

Halston opens in Toronto at The Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema on Friday, May 31, 2019. It expands to Hamilton on June 12, Ottawa, Victoria, Vancouver, Edmonton, and Regina on June 14, and to Saskatoon and Montreal on June 21.

Check out the trailer for Halston:

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