Halston

(1932-1990)

   Roy Halston Frowich was born in Iowa and studied fashion illustration at the Art Institute of Chicago. His fashion career began as a milliner designing hats for Lilly Daché. Halston is the designer of the pillbox hat worn by Jacqueline Kennedy at U.S. President John F. Kennedy's inaugural. In 1966, he designed his first womenswear collection for Bergdorf Goodman and launched the first Halston collection in 1968. Making Ultrasuede a must-have fabric, Halston is best known for his ability to marry exquisitely cut simple silhouettes with luxury fabrics. Elsa Peretti designed the bottle of his very successful eponymous perfume. Halston was the first designer to sign a partnership with a mass merchant, J. C. Penney's, in 1983, which some say led to his company's demise. After Halston's death in 1990, the company was reopened in 1995 by Tropic Tex. However, it was later sold to Catterton Partners in 1998, who hired Randolph Duke to revive the collection, but was again sold to Newco LLC in 1999. The collection has had a succession of designer names pass through it since 1999—Kevan Hall, Craig No-tiello, Piyawat Pattanapuckdee, and, in 2002, Bradley Bayou. Bayou left in 2005 to start his own business.