![]() That was a whole other world, like Bill Blass and the rest. At the time, there were just five of us models - the same five girls who worked for Halston also worked for Stephen, Giorgio, and Fernando Sánchez. It was me, Naomi Sims, Elsa Peretti, Heidi Goldman, and Anjelica Huston. He’d just make one scissor cut across on the bias and then voilà! That’s it. He stood me up on the table, and he just started throwing fabrics on me and fitting me into something that he was making. Now get undressed.” So I take my clothes off, and we started working. Halston whipped around and saw me and said, “You made it. So I get there, and I go through the curtains to the back room, and it was all stark white with a huge cutting table in the center. The orchids and the Rigaud candles - it was all intoxicatingly luxurious. There was palm-leaves wallpaper and orchids and Rigaud candles … You’d walk into this room that looked like a jungle. He’d just gotten an atelier on 68th Street, which wasn’t fancy. He said, “I would love for you to come to work with me and do my show.” He was there at the time making hats and things. He said he saw me in a show in Chicago - the Ebony Fashion Fair in 1966. I thought, Well, who am I? I don’t know who I am, either. He was a designer, but everybody was a designer. He said, “I know you.” And I didn’t know him at all because everybody was just starting out. Halston walked into the room and came right over and sat down next to me. Well, I was at this party with Stephen Burrows in 1968 on Madison Avenue. When did you first meet Halston? What was your interaction like? ![]() Halston, when he walked into a room, he was just so sleek. But he just didn’t have the stature, and that bothered me. Like, sometimes he really sounds like Halston. But it was touching because you see how he struggled like everybody else. I love dramas for drama, but with a person like that who cared so much about quality and who worked so hard to be the American couturier and to keep things going … I never saw him falter. It would have been nice if they accentuated more of what he really wanted. I think what they do in television and movies is they exaggerate the bad stuff instead of talking about all the fabulous things that he did. You’ve seen the first two episodes of Halston on Netflix. Well, this is exactly why I wanted to speak to you, because you actually knew the real-life person. You just felt like somebody picked you up and put you in Heaven when you were with him. I don’t think anybody could ever play him the way he really was. We’re alive, we’re here, and we’re going to walk down memory lane with that beautiful, elegant Halston! Oh so beautiful, my God. Thank you so much for speaking with me today. Below, she brings the designer back to life in her own words. As a model in the 1960s and ’70s, she knew Halston before he was “Halston” - and before his gaggle of muses became known as the “Halstonettes.” She claims to be the person who brought him to Studio 54 for the first time, and they would go on to travel the world together over the course of their careers, from Chicago to Paris to the Great Wall of China.īefore the premiere of Halston, the Cut spoke to Cleveland over Zoom from her home in New Jersey, where she was wearing her own House of VRC yogawear. Pat Cleveland was one member of the designer’s inner circle. A man who reportedly spent $150,000 a year on orchids alone, Halston was committed to surrounding himself with beautiful people and things. It wasn’t always rosy: Halston died of AIDS in 1990 after battling a cocaine addiction and selling away his name. However you feel about the series, it presents yet another opportunity to dive into the life of a genius creator and legendary personality from Des Moines, Iowa who made the most of his short time on earth. But Halston’s family has publicly rejected the film, calling it an “inaccurate, fictionalized account” of his life. People seem to agree that Ewan McGregor, who plays the titular role, can convincingly smoke a cigarette and woo society women with his smooth talk. On Friday, Netflix released Halston, a five-episode miniseries based on the life of the famous American fashion designer, born Roy Halston Frowick. ![]() Photo: Private Archives of Pat Cleveland. The Halstonettes on a trip to China in the 1980s.
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