Celebrity Designer Halston Dies at 57 : Fashion: Brother says he died after 1 1/2-year battle with AIDS-related lung cancer.
Halston, the celebrity fashion designer whose creations included gowns for Liza Minnelli and pillbox hats for Jacqueline Kennedy, died Monday night at Pacific Medical Center of AIDS-related lung cancer. He was 57.
Halston, which was the designer’s middle name, became one of the best-known labels in fashion and changed the way women dressed in the 1960s, but he sold the rights to his name in 1973 for $16 million, creating a tangle that diluted his influence.
The hospital said in a statement that Halston died Monday at 11:22 p.m. of “Kaposi’s sarcoma involving the lungs.”
His brother, Robert Frowick, said death came after a 1 1/2-year battle with AIDS and AIDS-related cancer.
“I’m very, very saddened by this loss,” Minnelli said at her New York apartment. “I just lost my best friend.”
Halston became a pre-eminent American fashion designer in the 1960s, numbering the First Lady, Minnelli and Lauren Bacall among his clients. He also became a jet-set figure and a regular associate of Minnelli, Andy Warhol, Bianca Jagger and the rest of the Studio 54 crowd in the 1970s.
In the beginning Halston confined his work to women’s fashions but in the 1970s he also designed clothing for men, including garments for the 1976 winter and summer Olympic Games.
The designer was born Roy Halston Frowick on April 23, 1932, in Des Moines.
He attended Indiana University and the Art Institute of Chicago, where he majored in fine arts.
In 1958 he joined the staff of Lily Dache in New York as a specialist in hat design. From there, Halston moved to Bergdorf Goodman. He opened his own couture house in 1968.
His work won him four Coty fashion awards and a niche in the Coty Hall of Fame.
His designs were characterized by classical simplicity and the use of fine materials.
“The Halston label on a dress or perfume tells a woman that what she’s buying will be recognized as ‘right,’ ” Vogue magazine once said, “that it’s more than just stylish, it’s in good taste.”
But Halston’s position at the pinnacle of the fashion industry began to slip dramatically in 1973, when he signed a $16-million deal with Norton Simon Inc. for his ready-to-wear line, his couture operation and the Halston trademark. The agreement let Norton Simon use the Halston name for products the designer didn’t design, and Halston couldn’t use his name on any product without Norton Simon’s permission.
In 1982 Halston signed a lucrative contract allowing the J. C. Penney Co. to market a line of budget clothing bearing a version of the famed Halston label. Bergdorf Goodman announced the following year it no longer would carry his clothes.
