![]() ![]() (He repudiated his other muse, the heiress and jewellery designer Elsa Peretti, whose work for Tiffany & Company is in the British Museum and who died this year). No, the colour here is provided by Minnelli, one of the few friends Halston did not reject. When Halston was alive – he died of Aids in 1990, at 57, having sold his name - it wouldn’t have been made. ![]() I suspect the truth – Halston was an artist, infinitely more daring than Ralph Lauren and his self-hating WASP chic – was more complicated. Halston is written as a tragedy, a cautionary tale. I am nervous watching a man be reduced to the misery induced by his sexual preferences and Halston is so wracked that the freedom and colour he gave women is – and this is absurd - slightly muted. Halston it is likewise sanitised: quite often it is glib. There is a tendency to sanitise biopics of gay men, to make them palatable: Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, a gay man’s story written by his bewildered straight colleagues and Elton John in the self-serving Rocketman. ![]() So is his fall: to drug addiction, to sex addiction, to heartbreak, and to Studio 54, the brief-flowering New York City nightclub that defined the decadence of the late 1970s in America. (I think he was trying to sound like Orson Welles and I don’t blame him.īut he was born in Dees Moines, Iowa). It details Halston’s rise from Jackie Kennedy’s milliner – he made the pillbox hat she wore to her husband’s inauguration - to couturier to pusher of cheap mass fashion, and McGregor does a fair impersonation of his contradictions, his expressions – under the sunglasses he always wore - and his ridiculous voice. The show isn’t as creative as the man it is named for: how could it be? Netflix is gaudy and well-funded, but it is not imaginative, as its subjects were. Minnelli is in Halston from Netflix, a new five-part series about the most original designer America ever produced, with the ever-watchable Ewan McGregor as her best friend Roy (Halston) Frowick. I didn’t care for Sex and the City and its grasping archetype hags – it was consumerist Feminism, empty Feminism - but it is right in this sense, if only by coincidence or mistake. This sale will have something for everyone.It is a truism – and a joke from the Sex and the City 2 – that whenever there is a peak of gay energy in any room, Liza Minnelli automatically appears. “She’s as close to American royalty as one can get, and we have an incredible array of items spanning her childhood and illustrious career. “This is exciting on so many levels: there’s Liza the Hollywood star, the socialite fashion icon, daughter of legendary actress Judy Garland and Oscar-winning director Vincente Minnelli,” said Joe Maddalena, CEO of Profiles in History, which is producing the auction. A red sequin tuxedo as well as a range of other custom pieces will be on display as both an homage to the iconic American designer as well as a celebration of her love of Studio 54, which she often frequented while wearing Halston designs. The exhibition, which is free to the public, will include a special room dedicated to the actress’ relationship with the legendary ‘ 70s designer Roy Halston. Highlights from the auction and exhibition include photographs by Andy Warhol, Richard Avedon, Annie Leibovitz and David LaChappelle, as well as “the finest collection of rare and unpublished photographs in existence on the lives and careers of Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli.” An MGM Studios paycheck made out to a 13-year-old Garland is also among the lots. I hope my fans will be thrilled to not only have a chance to own a piece of my history but also that of my mother and father - Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli.” “Without their unending love and support, none of this would have been possible. “Throughout my long career I have collected wonderful possessions and memorabilia and now I’ve reached a point in my life where I want to simplify and share with my fans who have always been there for me,” said the 71-year-old Minnelli in a release. ![]()
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