Culture

Style for Ages: Ryan Murphy Talks All Things Halston — Including His New Series — With Tom Ford and Hamish Bowles


 

This post originally appeared on Vogue.

Roy Halston Frowick was a boy raised in Indiana who became a soaring fashion legend and an international household name that defined the heady Studio 54 era—until he burned out from drugs, poor business decisions, and, ultimately, AIDS. Ryan Murphy’s new Netflix series Halston, subtly directed by Daniel Minahan, casts a compelling Ewan McGregor as the complex designer. Hamish Bowles talks with Murphy and Tom Ford about Halston, those extraordinary years, and the crushing demands of design at the top.

Hamish Bowles: Ryan, what excited you about Halston and his story and made you feel this could be developed into a series?

Ryan Murphy: I grew up in Indiana—where Halston is from—surrounded by cornfields and churches, and I always heard about two people who had gotten out and gone on to bigger, glamorous things: One was Florence Henderson, and one was Halston. He was always a big figure in my mind—a representation of somebody who had come from humble beginnings and had gone on to do something incredible with his life—and I was always moved by him.

HB: Tom, when did you first become aware of Halston and his work?

Tom Ford: Well, a little bit the same: When I was a kid, my grandmother always had W, which then was a gigantic newspaper thing, and so I was very aware, as a 15-year-old, of who Halston was. You couldn’t not be aware if you cared about design at that time—I mean, the Ultrasuede, the wrap dress he did, the luggage for Hartmann. You couldn’t miss it. I moved to New York in the summer of 1979 and was lucky enough to just catch the end of that period.

Halston and his muses.Photographed for Vogue in 1972

RM: I have a book that has an amazing photograph, Tom, of you at Studio 54.

TF: Boy, I look horrible in that picture. That was some sort of 1920s party or something. My hair’s slicked back. I knew all those people—I can’t say we were best friends; I was an 18-year-old twinkie that was invited when somebody wanted extra cute boys around—but I did meet Halston a couple of times, and I went to his house once.

I was—to say “dating” is not quite right—with Fred Hughes, who worked with Andy [Warhol]. Fred was in his mid-30s, and I guess I was 18. But we would periodically date or sleep together or whatever you want to call it. And we went by Halston’s house to pick somebody up, and I walked in, and I remember just thinking, Oh, my God—this is exactly how I want to live.

So when that house came on the market a few years ago, a friend sent me a clipping. It had been redone by Gunter Sachs, who had bought it with Gianni Agnelli in 1990, [just before] Halston died. [Ford bought the house on East 63rd Street in 2019.] I’m redoing the top floor, mimicking Halston’s office [in Olympic Tower on Fifth Avenue], which you did so perfectly in your sets, all red on red on red on red, and mirror and mirror and mirror. I know all of that intimately—the sofas and everything. I’ve been copying those Halston sofas and chairs since I was at Gucci; I’ve copied them in my own stores.

RM: We spent a lot of time on that because it’s one of the things I admired about Halston—and about you: Your surroundings matter. You create a world, and people are invited to that world. You do that in your stores—I mean, one of the first things that I was obsessed with when I went into one of your stores for Gucci was your ability to curate an atmosphere that people want to be in. It’s the details. Halston did that.



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