HALSTON & TZAIMS & AKIRA

 ROY HALSTON FROWICK

HALSTON

● 

It is time I tell what I know of HALSTON especially because so much negativity and an exploded image of him exists in the media

●

First

Are you noticing the pattern of youtube bios of fashion designers?

● 

The Dark Story of

Yves Saint Laurent

Halston 

McQueen

Dior

Versaci

Vuitton

Hermes

Gucci

&

More

Actually non of them owned their own name

●

Each was/is owned by artless business conglomerates destroying the lives of these designers

●

Was or is the House of Dior really great?

●

No

The hype and packaging is great.  The designer is mediocre.  Christian Dior lasted for only

 10 years totally unknown before 1947

●

His New Look was not new after world war II.  It was a copied and modified verdion of anti bellum hoop skirt ball gowns.  A retro vintage look

●

Dior, the label, didn't ever own Dior

●

A businessman financier owned it supported by the fashion press and it still is as is, was, for all these famous designers

●

Tzaims Luksus' name and logo was never owned by any business conglomerate so it never became a global label

●

What's in a name?  By any other name a Dior will smell as putrid if called Saint Laurent or Bohan

●

● 

What if this was reversed?

●

Halston could be the greatest stench in fashion history but Anna Wintour claims that title

●

The media makes and breaks people and Halston is the best example, after Yves Saint Laurent, to have suffered from this media crime

●

I met Halston through Bill Cunningham, THE New York times reporter, also once a Chicago hat designer, coming first from Boston and and ending in NYC like Halston

●

He and Bill belonged to an avant guarde fashion elite group centered around the famous fasion artist Charles James, called a madman by the New York Fashion Press

●

It was a small group consisting of Bill, Halston, Antonio Lopez, a fashion illustrater and Joe Eula, also a fashion illustrator.  They connected in Paris with Percival Sauvage, a teen lover of Christian Dior before Yves Saint Laurent became Dior's lover after Percy left

●

EAU SAUVAGE

Percy was Dior's inspiration to name his first men's cologne

SAUVAGE PUR L'HOMME

●

This group was self motivated and independent in the realm of fashion, all very, but limited, creative and from relatively unwealthy families.  I fit in perfectly not realjzing what it might lead to

●

 

Charles James wasn't a madman.  He simply insisted in not compromizing his independence which the fashion press puses designers into losing control of their self determination and independence.  The fashion press is employed by corporate businessmen that use the press to gain control of a designer's name and logo

●

This was most evident with Halston and Yves Saint Laurent boyh gullible to be wealthy and famous

●

 Money

●

Every designer at one point is forced to bring in financial backing to succeed

●

One day, as I experienced, someting a designer creates becomes bigger than he can financially manage.

●

 He creates something taking very little money that sells massiveky so to fill the order, the demand, he immediately needs $1.Million to deliver

●

The press push this by reporting favorably on it

●

When J met Halston he was well established in NYC at Bergdorf Goodman just designing hats

●

For me he was fjormidabls being so secure, so young, yet the quintessential person living lavashly in NYC social luxury

●

I was hardly that well situated and instant fame for me drove me to face a style of life I had no experience in, yet Halston admired and greately envied and respected me.  His constant attention was over whelming and greatly helped me face this fashion cum society world that I was suddenly thrust into

●

He was loyal and dedicated so when the fashion press started to taint my image demanding free clothes from me  he stuck by my side.  Though very fickle and pretentious, he was, for me consistant

●

The fashion press started to call me a madman just just as they did with Charles James when I turned down millions of dollars from DuPont and Allied Chemical, makers of Nepalm, for not endorsing their synthetic fibres

●

I knew what I was doing and I knew I wasn't mad, so did Halston, so I asked Bill Cunningham to introduce me to Charles James

●

Cunnungham refused but Halston did and arranged for us to have dinner at Elaine's private dining room

●

Charles was impeccably dressed, lean, elegant, intelligent as a fine British gentleman should be.  We became instant friends

●

Charles, even greater than Halston, revealed what what the fashion would was

●

Though Bill Cnningham from painful experience explained previously that the corporate business people and lawyers were Sharks, the Buyers were Baracuda and the fashion press and public relations agents were Pirana.  

●

Hardly mad jn the least

●

The greatest and best thing that Halston and me achieved was having lunch at the new L'Etoil restraunt in the Sherry Netherland Hotel which was, together, our choice for my next collection of haute couture.  The manager agreed but it could only be available after closing and cleanup after the staff left just before Midnight

●

I accepted

●

A HISTORC FIRST BLACK TIE FASHION EVENT

●

Halston made my hats from my designs except for three spectacular fearher hats.  One, a magnificent long black feather crowning helmet he designed for me0

●

Mother of pearl & Prussian Peacock Blue Sequin gown by Luksus with long black feather head dress by Halston 1966 Summer

●

New York Times photo and only photo of this gown and head dress in existance

●

That was in July

●

 Now jumping ahead to December, my financial backers wanted total control of my fabric and fashion companies, cutting me out

Instead i shut everything down and kept my name and logo so it couldn't be commercialized by them

●

I wasn't about to do what Halston eventually did

●

Before December Halston decided to buy my fabrics and start making clothes at Bergdorf Goodman

●

Only a few since he hadn't tried making clothes before meeting me

●

I was locked out by my financial backers but Halston found a wealthy young couple, Didi and John Ryan, who offered to bring me back financially again

●

Halston, totally unselfishly, sought out opportunitiesfor me from his wealthy clientelle

●

Having been burned so badly by John and Jane McCullough I was relunctant accepting the contract details they demanded.  Didi was too flambouyant in a gay life style and John too hard nose artless business

●

For me this was jumping out of a very cold frying pan into a fire

●

I kind of ended my close association with Halston on a daily basis by refusing but not our  friendly contacts.  I didn't hear from him for some time

●

Then I heard he left Bergdorf Goodman and started his own fashion house on Madison Avenue, just as I wanted

●

I visited him there and he was almost the same but now with a more seriously commanding attitude, perhaps because Didi Ryan was also there for lunch in his Safari set up with him keeping up appearances for her who now he dressed exclusively

●

John and Didi backed him after I turned them down

● 

Now a very new Halston emerged and what happened to the Ryans, I never knew

●

I took up with Rebekka Harkness and entered the Paris Haute Couture and Halston climbed into my position in NYC as it's top fashion designer

● 

I was locked out of NYC fashion by the US fashion press

● 

Then Pierre Berge of Yves Saint Laurent, locked me out of the Paris haute couture with the help of  La Monde and Le Figero newspaper fashion critics

and John Fairchild of Women's Wear Daily through Eugenia Sheppard in NYC

●

 

Part II

THE RISE AND FALL 

of 

HALSTON

●

I may have known Roy Halston Frowick better than anyone and I felt in him, his innocent friendship from him, much the same as a, my, younger brother might display toward an older brother.  we had much fun together.  I saw quickly saw his two sides.  The bold social image and societal ladder cljmbing as well as his feeling of self doubt, the need to have a mentor, someone to wind down with but he and I were nothing alike and there was a side to him that I felt uncomfortable with, that revolted me.

●

 Not fear of anything sexually untoward for me but an emminent disastor waiting ahead for him in his future path.  He was perched on a thin branch like Humpty Dumpty sitting on a thin wall

●

Actually I dismissed it but when he told me he wanted to start making clothes then I should have realized something amiss

●

Could I have saved him.  Most probably not since our directions, though close to being parallel with one another, was also the thing that separated us

●

His flambouyant, though  controlled, gay life style was not in any way appealing to me.  Like Cunningham neither had any sexual appeal, in my  view both were asexual, just robotics paying their way sexually through life secretely but not discretely

●

I wasn't gay in any sense of the word daunted by my Saturnian earth bound reality and though I walked among their kind and way of life I wasn't part of it

●

Luxurious abandoming practical living was Halston's style, Cunningham, on the other hand, pretending to be poor

●

Though never did we visii one another at our private lodgings in NYC, he did stay at Buckthorne Hall one weekend in October to a house party I was giving.  He, Bill, Antonio and Juan arrived in a black limo and slept in the servants wing since I had older guests, including a Vanderbilt, in the main bedrooms

●

Now after he took up with the Ryans I mostly lost touch with him.  His dark side I saw emerged in him, fame was a deadly path for him and as he rose in the fashion lime light he lost his work ethic ability and producing nothing himself 

●

He hired ruthless ambitious designers, and from the Studio 54 and Lisa Minalli caberet life style he hebindulged in he became famous for his lost design credibility with drugs and high paying  gay sex blatently advertised proving him now less a designer and creative person to one heading for self destruction as did Andy Warhole and Yves Saint Laurent.

●

He did exactly what I told him never to do.  Sell his name.  But he did, to Norton Simon for only $14 or 16 Million which in his hands would quickly slip out

●

It happened, but before this I visited him at his Olympic Tower atalier.  He kept me waiting then refused to see me,

●

Then all hell broke out when the NY Times featured the most destructive  press assault on him.  Much worse then they ever did to Charles James and me years before but with Halston they murdered him by revealed he had AIDS, was locked out of the Olympic Tower, lost owning his name, baning him from fashion for life, and published his home address and private phone number

●

J was in shock.  I called his number but always busy as though it was off the hook.  It was busy for days.  I knew somehow the terrified boy was still in him and he needed a friend.  

 ●

Late one night I walked to his town house.  Rang.  A man answered over a voice contact.  Be said Halston was busy, I insisted,  Halston came and spoke but didn't answer the door.  I asked if I could help.  He said no.  We talked, he thanked me

●

As I turned to leave three men with pipe wrenched from a white van came toward me.  They had waited for days for him to come out claiming Halston infected their younger brother with AIDS and planned to kill him

●

They let me go but after turning the corner I told the doorman of the elegant apartment house to call the police as a white van was parked at their service door with ill intentions and threatening people

□●

I walked home to 56th street thinking about it all

●

Then I read he drove his Rolls Royce to San Francisco and died of AIDS in hospital

●

What a great loss of life of one young boy's dream turning into perhaps the greatest tragedy in  US fashion history

● 

Could this have happened to me had I tossed caution to the wind for a few million dollars unlimited fame and fortune? 

●

NO!  NEVER

●

AKIRA

How did Akira, the Japanese Fashion designer fit into Halston's life and my own in Halston's last years?

●

PART III

One day in the 1980s I received a phone call at my 56th Street apartment

●

"My name is Akira.  I am First fashion assistant for Halston.  I greatly admire your fashions and fabrics.  Can we meet for lunch very soon.  I want to meet you and tell you what is happening at Halston's"

●

We met but our association was short lived.  He said his job at Halston was to cut up my clothing, make copies of patterns, and destroy them.  He claimed Halston was buying everything I designed and manufactured and my clients were giving or selling him what they bought from me and destroying all my work

● 

Akira said Halston didn't know how to design, drape, cut or sew clothes.  He had an army of designers designing everything. He claimed Halston considered me the most creative fashion and fabric designer in the world and he had to erase my work so it could never be compared with what his company produced

●

He felt that Yves Saint Laurent was not a designer but a copier that was evident in YSL's output and no real competition for Halston

●

I listended to this now understanding why Halston refused to meet me at the Olympic Tower.  

● 

Soon after Akira left Halston and opened his own questionable fashion house on Seventh Avenue and asked me to come design along side him

●

I did for a few days but his way conflicted with mine and being Japanese he didb't understand American fashio but was pursueing that of decadent Parix

●

My heart was no longer actually, at this time,in fashion in a commercial way

●

There was no longer a wealthy clientelle I respected and simply designing to thrill a parasitic fashion press with dazzling creations not wearable did not give me reason

●

For me fashion was dead.  I was no longer needed or wanted

●

Akira became hateful, arrogant and threatening

●

Then Bernard Anault backing Christian LaCroix sealed the fate of credible fashion credibility and Anna Wintour, the Devil wearing Prada, with Vogue Magazine devastated American designers teaming up with the irresponsible but talented public relations  agent Percival Sauvage, now in London and Paris, by elwvating and tearing into Alexander McQueen the terrorist hell raiser car fire bomber of British trash designer leading him to hang himself after Bernard Arnault further destroyed him by giving him Givenchy's atelier in Paris. 

●

Finally John Galiano disgraced Dior and Arnault hired the untalented Rafe Somers for the house of Dior ending all Paris haute couture

●

 Lef us not leave out Versaci's murder in Miami Beach by a disfunctuhinal sex partner Versaci passed on AIDS to.  Like Halston

●

The end started with John Lennon's murder, Princess Diana taking up Dodi Alfaed, crashing in a brutal death in a car accitent,  and finally Andy Warhole being shot, Halston  eliminated and  Pjere Berge's expose of his sexual control of Yves Saint Laurent

●

Then China manufacturing goods for Paris luxury fashion house goods cheap

●

THE FALL OF LVHM

●

Now

THE FALL 

OF 

LOUIS

VUITTON

HERMES 

& 

GUCCI

developing

●

Have a nice day

😀

 

●