King of the Drape
Halston Acolytes Past and Present Come Out for Ultrasuede Doc
If the ghost of Halston dropped by New York on Friday, it wasn't because of some elaborate séance at Liza Minnelli's pad. It was for a premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. The movie on view was Ultrasuede, Whitney Sudler-Smith's new documentary about the late designer's life and times, and it brought out a mix of Halston's friends—among them Bob Colacello and Naeem Khan (who got his start as the designer's assistant)—and modern acolytes, including Marc Jacobs, Georgina Chapman, and Sarah Jessica Parker, who's designing the brand's new Heritage line.
As the doc points out, Halston's dramatic rise in the seventies and his eighties fall is in part a tale of licensing overreach. At the after-party at the new Trump Soho's ground-floor restaurant, hosted by the Cinema Society, Ambrosi Abrianna, and Vanity Fair, one guest insisted there had been Halston toilet paper. But the room was full of people who could attest to his enduring appeal: Mad Men actor Bryan Batt, for one, remembered swooning over Halston looks in the fashion magazines he read growing up. "I think I had the Z-14 cologne," he recalled.
Rachel Zoe paid homage by turning up in a vintage Halston Ultrasuede trench. "I feel like I'm in a bathrobe right now," she said, adding that she'd bought it in Paris without trying it on. "It actually has a skirt that came with it, and I'm not wearing it because it was probably on a six-foot model, and I'm nowhere near six feet." Zoe, who was briefly linked with the label's creative team when Harvey Weinstein and co. took over in 2007, has been collecting the house's offerings since she was 16—with one rule: "I only own vintage Halston, because I want what he touched."
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