

On a different evening at 101, Warhol recalled a dramatic falling out between Halston and Tiffany & Co. Warhol wrote in his diaries of an evening where Liza Minnelli and Martin Scorsese rang the doorbell at 101 and asked Halston for “every drug you’ve got.” He gave Minnelli “a bottle of coke, a few sticks of marijuana, a Valium four quaaludes.” “Halston said I was the only white boy he ever loved.” Fashion designer Halston entertained jet-setters like Betsy Theodoracopulos and Elsa Peretti. It took a year before I succumbed and slept with him,” said Hay, who traveled with the designer through Europe. “He looked at me like I was a really yummy ice cream cone. Couri Hay, who claimed to have had a brief affair with Halston as a 17-year-old after meeting him at Bergdorf Goodman while buying a Panama hat. “Victor had the keys to the safe with the cocaine,” said publicist R. Halston’s on-again-off-again partner, artist Victor Hugo, led man-on-man orgies late into the night - and Warhol enjoyed photographing from the sidelines. The trashier you could be, the more you could get laid, the more drugs you could take.” A side view of Halston’s townhouse on 101 East 63rd Streetĭressed in drag, Studio 54 co-owner Steve Rubell handed out quaaludes. “It was one of the most reckless, anything-goes moments in history,” said Gaines, whose book chronicles Halston’s exploits - from sex with male prostitutes (whom he’d serve steak as foreplay) to watching a Moroccan sex show that featured bestiality. He first met the designer through Warhol at a Gerard Malanga poetry reading, and compared spending time with the man to getting licked by a cat: At first it feels good, but then it begins to scratch. “101 was the clubhouse for the Studio 54 crowd,” said Steven Gaines, author of the book “Simply Halston,” which is being developed into a feature film. The opening of Studio 54 in 1977 only stoked the fires of excess. He really preferred to entertain at home,” said Frowick.Ĭleveland described that period of time with Halston as “the limo life.” “He draped us in diamonds and dressed us in silk and chiffon,” said the model, who was part of the designer’s entourage, called the “Halstonettes.” “They were always putting money in boxes and giving it to everyone.” It was laid out completely for entertainment. The following year, he scooped up “101” - as the four-story Upper East Side townhouse came to be known among the 1970s jet set - and established a venue to celebrate his success. In 1973, Halston signed over his booming fashion empire for roughly $12 million to billionaire Norton Simon’s corporation, where he continued to design on a massive salary and with a cut of the profits.
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“He knew how to flatter the female body.”

He reached back to antiquity for inspiration,” said Halston’s beloved niece, Lesley Frowick, who is the director of the fashion icon’s archives. “His simple elegant designs are timeless. Andy Warhol called his runway shows “the art form of the ’70s.” He soon began creating couture and ready-to-wear fashions for celebrity clients such as Babe Paley, Anjelica Huston, Gene Tierney, Lauren Bacall, Margaux Hemingway and Elizabeth Taylor. In 1961, he designed the pillbox hat that Jacqueline Kennedy wore to the presidential inauguration, cementing his reputation as the “It” designer for fashionable ladies. “There was always music playing, Rigaud candles burning and orchids everywhere.”īorn Roy Halston Frowick in 1932 in Des Moines, Iowa, Halston exploded onto New York’s fashion scene from the millinery department at Bergdorf Goodman.
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“Going to his house with all the movie stars hanging out on the gray couches, it was so private and glamorous,” iconic fashion model Pat Cleveland, 68, told The Post. With its two-story, bamboo-filled greenhouse, double-height ceilings, roof terrace, sunken living room and catwalks overlooking all the action, it was the spot for disco-era debauchery. In 1974, at the height of his influence, the legendary fashion designer Halston purchased a dramatic, Paul Rudolph-designed party pad at 101 E.
