It is not rare to see unauthorised films or series about fashion designers often getting criticized by the families and relatives of the particular designer portrayed.
This happened with Ryan Murphy’s "The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story", with Ridley Scott's much-anticipated "The House of Gucci", starring Lady Gaga as Maurizio Gucci's black widow, Patrizia Reggiani, and more recently with the Netflix series "Halston", written and directed by Daniel Minahan and with Ryan Murphy as executive producer and co-writer.
Released in May this year, the series follows the rise and fall of Roy Halston (Ewan McGregor), from milliner who won notoriety when Jackie O who wore one of his pillbox hats, to fashion designer, but it is also a glamorous story of fashion, licences, perfumes, sex, drugs and money.
Halston's family wasn't consulted and, after the series came out, Lesley Frowick, Halston's niece and chief executive of his archives, released a statement complaining that the series was "an inaccurate, fictionalised account" of her uncle's life.
Halston's glamorous career, his excesses at Studio 54, but also his friends like the talented Elsa Peretti (Rebecca Dayan), who became Tiffany's most iconic jewellery designer, remain fascinating in this series, but there is a fault in it as the five epioseds do not allow us to grasp the essence of his designs nor to understand where the genius of this designer who represented American glamour in the late 1960s and '70s really lay.
Or rather we get a glimpse of it, like the intuition about the suedette shirt dress in the early '70s that became a must, a functional dress that women were able to put in the washing machine, but we don't see the arty patterns behind his iconic designs, or some quick yet striking solutions to build iconic accessories.
Maybe that’s due to the shortness of the series or maybe they were going through time limits, pressures and money issues, but the creative aspect gets sacrificed in favour of drama. Quick trips to some museum archives and collections may have lent wonderful inspirations instead and may have opened the minds of the viewers to more insights in Halston's creativity.
A quick example: the Costume Institute at the Met Museum in New York, preserves a mask made by Halston and donned by the American publisher Katharine Graham as a guest of honor to Truman Capote’s 1966 Black and White Masquerade Ball.
The mask perfectly matched the Balmain dress Graham chose for this occasion, replicating its ivory shade and its decorative motif with black beading and gems.
The real trick? Well, we usually think about a mask as something that covers entirely the wearer's face or eyes and that is usually secured with an elastic or fastened around the back of the head. Halston built the mask instead over an eyeglass frame (without the lenses; as you can see from the image posted on the Instragram page of The Met's Costume Institute).
In this way the mask wouldn't have ruined the wearer's hairstyle and may have been removed quickly and easily without needing any help. Now that’s a simple solution, but its often the simplest tricks that create the best and most iconic timeless designs.
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