"He began as a milliner, and his break came in 1961 when Jacqueline Kennedy wore his pillbox hat to JFK's inauguration. By the early 1970s he was the most famous designer in America. He was also a prodigious cocaine user, and he spent staggering sums to support the habit. His glass-and-steel townhouse at 101 East 63rd Street became the site of legendary parties fueled by drugs, hired escorts, and orchids he bought by the thousands of dollars' worth. That lifestyle played a major hand in his downfall."
"In 1973 he sold his company, and the trademark to his own name, to Norton Simon Inc. for around $12 million; by today's standards, more than $80 million. He became an employee of his own brand. For a while the machine roared. In 1975 the Halston fragrance arrived in a teardrop bottle designed by Elsa Peretti, the Italian-born aristocrat's daughter who had left Europe, come to New York, and become one of the most successful jewelry designers of the 20th century at Tiffany & Co."
"The perfume was a prestige product, sold through the better department stores, and it was a sensation. But then in the early 1980s Halston signed a mass-market deal with JCPenney, and the prestige fashion world recoiled; Bergdorf Goodman dropped him entirely. He made a fortune and lost his standing in the same stroke."
"His friendship with Peretti was intense and challenging. The drug-soaked chaos of his later years strained his closest relationships, and he'd moved to San Francisco in 1988 after his HIV diagnosis to be cared for by his family. His cause of death in 1990 was Kaposi's sarcoma involving the lungs, an AIDS-defining illness, having lost his name, his company, and most of the people who had once orbited him."
Roy Halston Frowick, born in 1932 in Des Moines, Iowa, became a leading American fashion designer after starting as a milliner. His major breakthrough came in 1961 when Jacqueline Kennedy wore his pillbox hat to JFK’s inauguration. By the early 1970s he was the most famous designer in America. He used cocaine heavily and spent large sums to sustain the habit, hosting legendary parties at his townhouse and buying orchids in vast quantities. In 1973 he sold his company and his name trademark to Norton Simon Inc. In 1975 his Halston fragrance launched in a teardrop bottle and became a sensation. In the early 1980s a mass-market deal with JCPenney damaged his prestige, and major retailers dropped him. After an HIV diagnosis in 1988, he moved to San Francisco for family care and died in 1990 from Kaposi’s sarcoma involving the lungs.
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