Mark Reviews Movies: HALSTON

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 6, 2019

Director Frédéric Tcheng begins Halston as a kind of mystery, in which the fate of its eponymous subject is left hanging as some enigmatic people scour through the remains of the man's life. The framing device, mostly present to provide a fictional and unconnected narrator, turns out to be a shallow piece of misdirection. The rest of this documentary is simply a straightforward biographical account of the famous fashion designer's rise and fall.

That story is intriguing, though, in the way that Halston, born Roy Halston Frowick, became a household name in the 1970s and '80s by taking advantage of corporate power. He ultimately discovered that selling one's name isn't the best idea for someone whose career and livelihood depend on name recognition.

It takes a while for Tcheng to get to this part of the story. Even then, it's clear that the filmmaker cares little about the nuances of Halston's deal with a capitalist machine and even less about how the designer's own attitude may have been the real cause of his descent.

Until that point, the movie tells us about Halston's life. Saving the man's childhood for an attempt at pathos at the end, the narrative jumps right into his career—first as a milliner for a high-end department store in New York City, where he gained recognition for designing a hat for Jacqueline Kennedy, and then creating ready-to-wear dresses of deceptively simple design (They were merely single, seamless pieces of fabric, folded and tied to wear). Halston's friends (including Liza Minnelli), acquaintances, employees, and fellow designers offer testimony about his character in the usual, uncritical fashion (Minnelli has a sound, personal reason for avoiding what she sees as useless, mean gossip, but that shouldn't stop Tcheng from trying to dig deeper).

The corporate deal basically provided Halston with everything he could want and more, although it made him a pariah or a joke in the world of fashion. Halston ultimately attempts to present this decision as a later-to-be-understood tragedy, since the designer gave up so much for money and fame. That angle doesn't quite work, unless one ignores Halston's drive for those things and the almost destructive way in which he handled his enterprise (e.g., drugs, partying, unnecessary expenses, and lording over his employees like a dictator). Tcheng sees all of this, but he seems to evade them in order to a simpler story.

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