Halston Still Looking for a Good Fit

Halston, the line created by the legendary Roy Halston, has a new designer and owner--yet again. This week Craig Natiello, a protege of Bill Blass, was named the new head designer by Neema Clothing Ltd., Halston’s fourth owner in three years. Natiello replaced design and creative director Kevan Hall.

Natiello was offered the head design job on Saturday, and by Monday had designed and produced a velvet dress worn by Halston’s public relations director, Laura Henson, to the Costume Institute gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that night.

As an assistant to American fashion giant Blass for 10 years, Natiello has quietly built a reputation and following with a loyal clientele among New York’s social elite. On his own, he designed wedding dresses for a variety of high-profile friends on both coasts, including writer Marina Rust, socialite Brooke de Ocampo, and Polo consultant and former West Coast fashion editor for Allure, Crystal Moffett-Lourd.

“There was a collective sigh of relief when it was announced that Craig was going to be with Halston because there was a rumor that he was going to Paris,” said Rust, a novelist and contributing editor to Vogue. “He knows exactly what his customer needs. He’s like Mr. Blass that way.”

Natiello was described as a young, energetic designer by Halston chief executive Nicholas J. DeMarco.

“I think he was always very talented. . . . This is his first opportunity to stand on his own two feet,” DeMarco said.

The 38-year-old Natiello is the latest designer to be tapped to recapture the magic associated with America’s first celebrity designer, who died in 1990. Halston was legendary as well for his social connections.

Natiello, too, is a well-connected insider in the New York social world and fashion scene. He grew up in the affluent Westchester, N.Y., suburb, where his father was a school superintendent and his mother a college professor. His father’s godfather was New York Gov. Alfred Smith.

After getting a B.A. in English and economics from Manhattanville College and briefly attending Parson’s School of Design in 1989, Natiello was introduced by a family friend--Georgette Klinger, founder of the well-known spa chain--to New York designers, including Halston and Blass.

For Natiello, the appointment at Halston is almost eerie. He had interviewed to be an assistant with Halston a decade ago.

“There was no room at the inn,” Natiello said.

Blass hired him in 1989 for “picking up pins, scrapping off shoes,” in the design room. Working for Blass gave him great entree into the social circle that can afford designer clothes. A few months later, though, he was helping to plan a collection show in Japan. And nine years later, Blass--in a rare move for designers--shared his bow after a runway show with assistants Natiello and Laura Montalban, who recently joined Oscar de la Renta.

Natiello said Blass taught him how a woman of a certain social stature dresses.

“I don’t think society women are ever in the spotlight, I think they’re spotted,” Natiello said. “Bill gave the best advice of all: Just put your imprint on it.”

He said Blass’ enduring lesson was “his sense of appropriate, from a man to a woman, from manners to clothing. . . . Style is about being appropriate. It’s manners, it’s how you act, you dress. It’s how you deal with friends. It’s being real. It’s being right for the occasion.”

Blass’ announced retirement in September, and the closing down of his couture and collection divisions is likely to leave a void in fashion for those women who love the understated elegance and “ladies who lunch” refinement symbolized by the designs of Blass, Oscar de la Renta and Geoffrey Beene.

DeMarco said Natiello is just the person to fill this gap. And Natiello has a ready clientele who agree.

Natiello is well-known for telling the women he dresses, “Shut up and listen,” Rust said. “And he’s always right. He knows what we want before we want it.”

Moffett-Lourd concurred, saying that she had only one fitting for her wedding dress with Natiello, “and he just whipped up what I had figured. . . . He is a wonderful, wonderful person.”

Halston Newco, as the company is known, has had rough sailing in its attempts to revive the legendary line. In the last four years, the company has had two other design and creative directors, Hall and Randolph Duke, who left in the summer of 1998 and has since formed his own company.

The company was sold last week by the investment group Catterton-Simon Partners to Neema Clothing Ltd., a menswear concern owned by James J. Ammeen. DeMarco said Halston had been looking for six months for an investor and that Neema can offer the company a chance to offer men’s suits by Spring 2001. DeMarco will remain as Halston CEO.

Natiello’s first Halston show, this spring in New York, will be very short, “no more than 12 minutes,” he said, admitting that the next few months won’t give him much time to put out a large collection. But he does promise that his collections will offer a woman diversity. “She can buy five things from this collection, and she can go from day to night to major night.”

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Barbara Thomas can be reached at barbara.thomas@latimes.com.