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Simply Halston: The Untold Story
Gaines, Steven S.
1991 1101011435 There's a sad irony in the glitzy life of fashion designer Roy Halston Frowick, product of a Midwestern Depression childhood with an alcoholic father and the self-made ``King of New York night life.'' Halston, whose clean-cut, all-American style was mass-marketed through J. C. Penney, was hooked on cocaine, booze and Quaaludes and had a nasty anti-Semitic streak, as portrayed here. As his fame peaked, he became increasingly paranoid, capricious and hot-tempered, according to Gaines, author of a Beatles biography ( The Love You Make ). Halston, at the height of his fame, was ``almost a caricature of a sissy homosexual fashion designer, haughty and superficial,'' we are told. There are candid details of his coked-out Venezuelan window-dresser lover, his endless stream of call boys, business reversals, cavortings with the rich and beautiful (Andy Warhol, Liza Minnelli et al.) and his death from AIDS in 1990 at the age of 57. Alternately fawning and damning, this frantic biography has a hollow center where a man should be. When Roy Halston Frowick died on March 26, 1990, the society pages and the world of haute couture lost one of their stars. Gaines has been indefatigable in collecting gossip for his account of the glamorous but dissipated life of the man best known for having dressed many fashionable women, such as Jacqueline Onassis, Liza Minelli, Elizabeth Taylor, and Martha Graham. There is nothing edifying in this expose of the unpleasant high jinks of Halston and his fellow celebrities, nor is any purpose served by spelling out the grim details of his death from Kaposi's sarcoma, a complication of AIDS. It is, however, interesting to read of Halston's self-promotion and marketing genius, as he made his leap from window dresser in Chicago to the top of cafe society in Manhattan. Review: Traces the life of Roy Halston Frowick, from the cornfields of the Midwest to the spires of Manhattan, where for ten years Halston reigned as the country's first celebrity designer, a genius couturier. His close circle of friends and clients included some of the most glamorous women in the world; he created Jacqueline Kennedy's Inaugural pillbox hat. His name was synonymous with classically cut, elegant designs, luxurious towels and sheets, a phenomenally successful line of fragrances, and the fabric known as Ultrasuede.320 pages. Mylar book cover included. Putnam Pub Group 0399136126 / 9780399136122
Hard Cover As New As New Book Jacket E Rutherford, New Jersey, U.S.A. out of Print
Price:
29.30 USD
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