The Halstonization of America

...thus, conversely, can George McGovern, who doesn’t change his views, be perceived by liberals as agreat man six years ago and a has-been today...

...But in recent years, with mobility on the rise and mass marketing ever more widespread, there’s beenatouchof New York everywhere...

...Halston gave a party at Studio 54 where a covey of doves was released for effect...

...they seem at once timeless andofthemoment...

...He began in hats (his first great coup was the pillbox Jackie wore to the 1961 inauguration), branched out into dresses, and left the employ of Bergdorf Goodman’s in New York in 1969, after nine years there, tostrikeout on his own...

...has verv little furniture...

...Halston unveiled his designs for new uniforms for the New York City Police and for the Girl Scouts of America...

...Blood in the Water If you live in a setting that changes that fast, you’re likely to become extremely defensive and to react to any criticism with ruthless counterattacks, knowing that if you let it go other sharks might pick up the scent of blood in the water and move in for the kill...

...There are more and more celebrities, whose existence is more and more perilous...

...Esquire reported that Steve Rubell had some unsavory financial connections and that he had on his staffapublicist who was paid on a commission-per-celebrity basis...

...Why isn’t this man smiling?’’ the cover headline said...

...What about people who can’t in good faith come out with a line of this year’s fashions-doctors and writers and politicians...

...Members of the Super Set, called SSTs, “move faster, further, and more frequently...

...As soon.as any trend goes into full swing, there’s potential for a new trend in knockingit...

...they’rewell suited to the needs of active women...

...Newsweek came out with its annual spring cover story on fashion...

...Ali MacGraw, in New York to promote her new movie, told reporters she thought Halston was “great” but that Calvin Klein was “the best...

...Although last summer the placeto be was Andy Warhol’s compound of cottages in Montauk, this summer Halston, Bianca, Liza, and Steve Rubell have rented a house on Fire Island...

...There’s Lillian Hellman, who 25 years ago t o l d a congressional committee that she couldn’t cut her beliefs to fit this year’s fashions...

...Halston designed the tablecloths for the opening-day party at Wolf Trap Park outside Washington...

...Salinger of the fashion world...

...Jason Epstein, a founder of The New York Review and a high official at Random House, wrote back in this reasoned fashion: “Do you understand how deeply your article insults [The New York Review’s] writers...

...Halston left New York for Fire Island...

...Halston’s look was a return to elegance...

...Shortly thereafter, The New York Post ran this headline: HALSTON SET AS MATCHMAKER FOR A MICK-LESS BIANCA...

...The lifespan of what’s new is a little shorter this year than it was last...

...Fran Lebowitz, the New York humorist of the moment, told The Washington Post that she used to like Perrier water until it became popular, but now “I resent it...

...Halston was quoted ina book called Thesuccess Trip as saying, “I happen to be very prolific at what I do...

...Mick and Bianca were reported to be seeking a divorce...

...Halston praised Bianca for dressing “against the current...

...Many people who don’t know a thing about Answers to last month’s puzzle...

...Thus Jerry Brown, a politician who specializes in riding each new twist, can vigorously condemn Proposition 13 up to election day and then warmly embrace it when it passes...

...It’s good for business...

...Halston told People -about his special relationship with Jackie 0. Jackie is actually very price-conscious, he said, despite what people say...

...One of them, Lacey Neuhaus, said she can “identify” with Halston’s clothes...

...Vitas Gerulaitis, Lorna Luft, Liv Ullman, and Tony Curtis were there, as well as a c o u p l e who had s p r a y - p a i n t e d themselves silver...

...The press has always had a code similar to thefashionindustry’s: just as nobody wants to buy yesterday’s fashions, nobody wants to buy yesterday’s news...

...So more and more the operative fear is not that you’ll flout convention, but that in a world whose standards and values and styles constantly change, you’ll beleft behind...

...Women’s Wear Dailjj’s weekly digest, W, announced that the Jet Set was out, and that the Super Set was in...

...His empire is now large enough to occupy seven lines of listings in the Manhattan phone book: Halston Enterprises Inc., Halston Ltd., Halston Fragrances, Halston Originals, Halston 3, Halston V, and Halston VI...

...People did a story on Pat Cleveland and Sterling St...

...Mick came later...

...However, this year Us, sadly, listed Ralph Nader among “the out people...

...Halston can be a durable celebrity because his designs and clientele are ever-changing...

...A new disco called Xenon opened...

...And how can you write about the Literary Situation when you make no effort to understand the writers concerned...

...So this year, therearealot more nervous people than there were last year...

...Halston designed a 30-piece wardrobe for Jacqueline Bisset to wear in The Greek Tycoon, a movie about a thinly disguised Jackie and Ari...

...He has been a name dress designer for almost a decade and has been part of each succeeding new twist during that time...

...The past year, for instance, has seen the advent of Us, several newTV“ta1k”and “magazine” shows, and a new gossip columnist in The New York Post, Diane Judge-more outlets that liveon telling their audiences what’s new and therefore have to be in constant search of newness (and its silent partner, obsolescence...

...One reason the pace getsalittlefaster every year is that every year the number of chroniclers of what’s new increases...

...and that the key concept now, in 1978, is Personal Life...

...Those who know rate his work somewhere in the good-to-genius range...

...The Lizas and Jackies and Biancas are really free advertising for all of Halston’s ready-to-wear merchandise...

...Bianca was there, and Margaret Trudeau...

...The gossip columnists began to knock Studio 54...

...It’s hard to go shopping for groceries anywhere in America today without having the opportunity to buy The National Enquirer and The National Star, People and Us...

...However, Us warned, “being In is very dangerous because the next step is...

...W profiled two female SSTs...

...If people were afraid, it was of being unconventional...

...Besides being unpleasant for the people involved, that fate has a disturbing implication in terms of the work they represent: that its value will be solely in its newness, not its worth...

...Studio 54 led the list of places the SSTs go to dance...

...Possibly, a part of the definition of what’s new next will be that you’re not part of it...

...Liza gave a birthday party for her half-sister, Lorna Luft...

...The Halstonization of America by Nicholas Lemann It’s been a busv year for Halston, the designer, and hi...

...So while we knew we could most effectively win publicity and acclaim-and therefore financial stability-through the investigative pitch, we were afraid that that would leave an opening to some press critic to point out that we hadn’t in fact caught many crooks, at which point we’d become out...

...The New York Times Magazine did a story on Halston’s townhouse, which Nicholas Lemann is managing editor of The Washington Monthly...

...With social, economic, and geographical mobility low, what status you could gain in life was achieved throughslowly building up a reputation over the years...

...Most of his money comes from ready-to-wear...

...But once that step is taken, there’s a clear choice: either keep changing every year to stay new or become forgotten and used up...

...Even in the sober world of policy-making, the twist applies...

...This presented a problem: our main concern has been pointingout why the government and the society don’t work as well as they should, and investigation of particular programs often serves that mission, while investigative reporting of the discovering-illegalit y variety has been a fairly minor chord in our editorial symphony...

...The extremely wide range of people who appear in, say, People and Us have all been identified as what’s new and have profited from being so identified...

...Close observation reveals endless examples of this...

...if people just wore the same clothes for 20years it would be financial disaster for Seventh Avenue...

...Halston’s clients for made-to-order clothes are people like Jackie, Liza, Lee Radziwill, Katharine Graham, Lauren Bacall, Racquel Welch, Candice Bergen, Ali MacGraw, Barbara Streisand, and Babe Paley, alongwithi host of others who are equally well-off if less well-known...

...Laurent, and Calvin Klein...

...Personal Life Stephen Birmingham, the writer, announced that he had undertaken a “psycho-history”of Jackie on which the publishers were hotly bidding...

...Margaret Trudeau, Norman Mailer, and Lacey Neuhaus were there...

...Halston and Bianca and Andy Warhol and Truman Capote were announced to be working on a disco record together...

...Liza Minnelli and Halston were there, too...

...Chaptertwoin thedramacameayear later, when James Fallows wrote an article taking Mary McCarthy to task for her writings on Watergate and Vietnam...

...Liz Smith of The New York Daily News reported that Halston had given Elsa a sable coat that, during one of their fights, she had thrown in the fire...

...There’s Philip Johnson, the pathbreaking modern architect, who even as his younger colleague, I.M...

...Bianca was on the cover of People...

...In 1974 we published an article by Suzannah Lessard that suggested that the circle of writers, editors, and publishers involved in putting out 7?ze New York Review of Books might be a little chummy, even if their publication was first-rate...

...He’s got a friend in the White House...

...One aid he has had is the rules of the designing game...

...and then to live in fear that you’ll be found out and that the next twist will be to hate you...

...Halston’s designs do have a certain informal elegance...

...In other words, they have become H alst onized...

...But there’s an important difference...

...In 1970 The Washington Monthly published an article about the Army’s spying on civilians that won us awards and recognition, and ever since then we’ve been praised in the press for our tough, fearless investigative reporting...

...He also designed acomplete wardrobe for Liza Minnelli to wear in her Broadway musical, The Act...

...Halston gave a birthday party for Bianca at his townhouse on the East Side of Manhattan...

...People did a story on Studio 54 and ran a dozen pictures of its owner, Steve Rubell, talking with celebrities...

...but if he preferred to live in Pittsburgh and lacked the knack for getting his clothes onto famous women’s backs, he would probably be nothing...

...The change-or-die ethic of fashion is closely mirrored in the celebrity world, with which fashion is so closely allied...

...He designs dresses in several price ranges, sheets, towels, perfumes, accessories...

...Liza won a Tony award...

...Now it’s possible that these fevered responses were just the product of pure thin-skinnedness, but more likely they were the product of thin-skinnedness with a reason behind it: the powerful fear that the twist was going to go against the subjects of our articles and that next year, after an avalanche of criticism, they would be as low as they were high then...

...A model of muckrakingjournalism, we were called...

...As long as he keeps producing new fashions, the old Halston can stay around...

...As the world of celebrity and what’s new reaches out to affect more and more people like us, who shouldn’t be in the business of producing this year’s fashions, life for those people becomes trying...

...But increasingly editors have realized that today’s news doesn’t have to bejust events-it can be people and trendsand ideas too, as long as they are todqS people and trends and ideas...

...The new thing is sticking it to the Soviets,’’ says one person familiar with the worlds of politics and fashion, “It’s like the long skirt ofthe 50scoming back...

...We were particularly inclined to this interpretation because we weren’t immune from the same fear ourselves...

...Wannounced that the key concept of the period 1970-73 had been Public Lives...

...The most familiar is the entertainment star who was suddenly last year’s hero and just as suddenly is this year’s goat, like Sylvester Stallone...

...He is determined to find Bianca a really rich husband...

...Norman Mailer and Elaine Kaufman, owner of Elaine’s, who had been feuding, made up at a publication party for Liz Smith’s new book...

...Women like these have always been the backbone of the high-fashion industry...

...And he can’t afford to let it stop meaningsomething...

...A common case in the world of letters comes whenever a strong f i r s t novelist is wildly overpraised, and knows that a lot of ambitious young literary critics are out there sharpening their knives as they await the publication of his next book...

...the substance of Halston’s work know who his intimate friends are, what the inside of his house looks like, and where he spends his free time...

...This year it was about Calvin Klein...

...Jacques, two models who work for Halston...

...Consequently, the nervousness of the people who are, right now, what’s new, is a little greater...

...Occasionally we see this at The Washington Monthly, when we take off-in what we imagine to be sober, moderate, and responsible fashionafter some part of the New York world and receive in return a literary firebombing...

...Pat is writing an autobiography (at age 22) called Suffer for Beauty...

...And as the number of outlets grows, the number and range of people they cover grows too, so that now the world of what’s new can include scientists and historians and architects and political activists as well as the actors and designers and musicians and politicians who have traditionally populated it...

...There’s a little moreof the sense that if you miss one party a completely different definition of what’s new will come into being, and it won’t include you...

...Born Roy Frowick in Iowa in 1932, raised in Indiana, the son of an accountant, he has been designing all his adult life...

...Later, he asked that his name beremovedfrom the credits...

...It had a huge model spaceship that descended from its ceiling...

...So although the pendulum may swing back and forth-tradition versus modernity, long skirts versus short, loose-fitting clothes versus tight ones-it never comes back to rest preciselywhereit has been before...

...In more and more of the country, you’re likely to rise through being or finding the latest new twist...

...If, in a fit of self-righteousness, he were to try to keep the same fashions year after year, then Halston himself would quickly pass out of style...

...Because it’s a great sheet...

...However, it’s possible to know a great deal about Halston without having tolearnany ofthat...

...Nonetheless, says one veteran of the fashion world, “If the celebrities went elsewhere, Halston would be nothing...

...Us asked...

...Those who care,”said theaccompanying column, “think Halston has only one mission in life at the moment...

...He can’t let aHalstonsheetoraHalston dress become just another sheet or just another dress...

...It did include the designers Kenzo, Yves St...

...Halston’s output can be boiled down into two rough categories: merchandise for the very rich and merchandise for the middle class, The former is custommade (made-to-order, as it’s called in the trade), the latter mass-produced (called ready-to-wear...

...Halston said Pat and Sterling are bound to “zenith at something...

...Those Who Thrive on Newness The centeroftheworld ofneophiliais New York...

...I cannot imagine a way not to take your imputations of bad faith personally...

...It’s tempting to enter the neophiliac fray, knowing it can bring immense rewards in terms of money and recognition, let alone glamourwould the cause of solar energy be where it is today without Sun Day and Robert Redford...

...Those who live by the twist die by the twist...

...Half a year ago nobody knew me,” Rubell told People...

...One ofthe pictures accompanying the story was of Rubell, Halston, and Margaux Hemingway...

...The affluence of the post-World War 11 years has caused a great boom in readytowear designer clothing, clothingthat is relatively expensive and has a famous name attached but isn’t out of the price range of the merely well-off...

...Rubell said he doesn’t let “bagel-nosh polyester types”into his disco...

...People quoted Steve Rubell assaying he wouldn’t let himselfin to Studio 54...

...TrumanCapoteand Andy Warholgave an Oscar-night party at Studio 54...

...The mood of Fallows’ article...

...Half a year from now everybody may forget...

...Vitas Gerulaitis, a tennis star, gave a party at Studio 54 to benefit the Foundation f o r Underprivileged Children...

...David Bowie, Bianca, and Halston had to sneak out the back door of Studio 54 one night and drive away in Steve Rubell’s limousine in order to avoid photographers...

...Traditionally, there has been less of that in smaller and slower-paced places than New York, where an ironclad set of conventions and standards reigned and the winds of change rarely blew...

...Later the party moved to Studio 54...

...Inside she was pictured talking with Halston and dancing at Studio 54, the new disco...

...Klein, the story said, spends his summers at Fire Island and his nights at Studio 54, and he goes twice a week to a dermatologist who smooths out the wrinkles in his face with silicone injections...

...In The Washington Monthly,” said Rosenberg, “which appears to besome kind of organ of journalism, Mr...

...In 1973 hesoldhis business, his name, and his services to Norton Simon Inc., the consumer-goods conglomerate, for an estimated $12million worth of stock...

...The fashion business depends for its livelihood on the idea that there have to be new styles every year...

...If Halston can sense accurately every year what this year’s fashions will be, then he as a person and celebrity can endure...

...to become very quickly a celebrity, wildly overrated...

...Because Halston’s name means something special...

...The notion of this year’s fashions has spread far and wide both in subject matter and in medium of dissemination...

...In this insecure world, Halston has <‘I dreamt I was sitting in on a National Security Council meeting, and guess what...

...But these days, it’s unlikely that Halston makes much profit from them...

...A new roller-skating disco called Roller Ballroom was announced to be under construction...

...James Fallows, one of the editors, attacks McCarthy’s newsgathering ability and, with added vehemence her apparent lack of respect for finding out the facts...

...Halston has so far been able to maneuver his way around that...

...is reflected in what is presumably asketch of McCarthy that accompanies it-it is an abysmal work, both as an attempt at a likeness and a drawing...

...It is also generously endowed with those who thrive on newness and celebrityhood -t he ambitious st rivers who people the celebrity press, and the unrooted, easily bored citizens who read about them...

...Certainly they had seen it happen to others...

...Especially in the last decade, the ready-to-wear concept has spread even further, to designer sheets and handkerchiefs and tennis shorts and wallets and car interiors...

...Halston has never been on the cover of People...

...As it is, Halston is not only skillful at knowing celebrities and getting publicity, but unusually durable at it too...

...that the key concept of 1973-77 was Private Lives...

...My fondest wish is that Steve Rubell comes here and they don’t let him in,” said one guest...

...Why are you going to buy a Halston sheet...

...Margaret Trudeau, Steve Rubell, Pat Kennedy Lawford, and of course Halston were there...

...Worrying is so, so 60s...

...being OUT...

...This time there wereno letters to the editor, but The New York Review itself struck back in an adoring review of McCarthy’s Watergate and Vietnam books by Harold Rosenberg...

...Jackie, Lee, Liza, and Bianca were there...

...Every year, somehow, this year’s fashions look exactly right and the fashions of five years ago impossibly dowdy...

...Ralph Nader was on the cover of Peoplelast year...

...Gloria Vanderbilt, Ethel Merman, Mike Wallace, and Nora Ephron were also there...

...Cher, Jimmy Carter, Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Erich Segal, and Charles Bronson were listed as “out people,” while Ruth Carter Stapleton, Diane Keaton, Fritz Mondale, Anwar Sadat, and Dolly Parton were among the “in people...

...After all, Halston has tailormade Bianca’s clothes for ages now, so why not her life...

...It was in all the papers...

...Halston’s rapport with celebrities, and their’s with him, and their affinity for whatever’s new, is no doubt genuine...

...Drawing by Dana Fradon...

...Doesn’t Ralph Nader know that worrying isn’t chic anymore...

...1978 The New Yorker Magazine, Inc managed to last far longer than most...

...The graveyards of fashion in New York are full of people who were riding high, who were what’s new, and who were then suddenly left behind by some new twist and never heard from again...

...However, Wslist of SSTs-including Prince Charles, Carter Brown, Jay Rockefeller, Woody Allen, Jackie, John Brademas, Lee Radziwill, and Moshe Dayan-did not include Halston...

...New York is the biggest city in the country and the center of the national media, other than movies and records...

...In short, for Halston and his friends in the New York celebrity world, it has been ayear a little faster-paced than the year that preceded it and probably a little slower than the one that will follow...

...Pei, is joining the Academy of the Overrated for his modern addition to the National Gallery in Washington, unveils a new building design that looks like a grandfather clock...

...In 1972 the story had been about Halston...

...Good for Business Although it’s a little hard to fathom why Halston is written about so much, it’s perfectly understandable why he would rather be a public figure than a nobly reclusive J.D...

...Halston had a widely reported feud with Elsa Peretti, the jewelry designer...

...As it happened, by the early 70s those beliefs were this year’s fashions and she was lionized for them-but today her politics are becoming last year’s fashions again and aren’t talked about...

...Fifty years ago, there was much less women’s clothing made in the socioeconomic gap between Macy’s and custom-made than there is today...

...They’re stuck with the choiceofeither sacrificingtheir integrity in order to remain what’s new, or being condemned to the fate of a nottoodistant obsolescence...

...For its first anniversary, Us magazine put out a special issue: “our exclusive guide to who’s in, who’s out, who’s hot, and who’s not-in TV, movies, music, theater, sports, art, fashion, and politics...

...Liza wasn’t t h e r e , b u t she was seen-and photographed-frequently at Studio 54...

...Though heis seldom described saying or doing anything very interesting, though he is not provably charismatic or compelling, hardly a weekgoes by when he isn’t mentioned in the popular press...

...Everybody May Forget’ In June Halston put on his fall madetoorder collection...