A Play About Halston Is Heading to Broadway

With his mononym, unmistakable style and Studio 54 all-nighters, Halston continues to intrigue even 34 years after his death.

The self-made American designer has been the subject of multiple books and the Netflix series “Becoming Halston” with Ewan McGregor, and now a one-man play about his life is being developed.

Written by Raffael Pacitti, “Mister Halston” features actor Ken Barnett, who has appeared in “Mozart in the Jungle,” “House of Cards” and “Mad Men,” among other roles. Feeling that Halston’s contribution to American culture has been downplayed, Pacitti said, “When people think of Halston, they think of the salacious stories — the cocaine [abuse] and Studio 54. Of course, all of that is part of it, but this man was a genius. The way that he viewed design, art and culture was superb.”

An industry stage reading of “Mister Halson” is slated for Jan. 17 in New York City. The aim is to have an off-Broadway or Broadway show as soon as next fall. More than five years in the making, the playwright said he first became fascinated with Halston as a youngster growing up in Canada. “Part of it was the confluence of all these things that were happening at the same time in the early 1970s — in terms of celebrity culture, women going into the workforce in a prominent way and how New York [City] was falling apart at that time. It was nearly bankrupt. There were all these abandoned apartments that you could just take,” Pacitti said.

Having started out as an actor, whose first side job was modeling bathrobes for Perry Ellis in New York City in the mid-1980s, Pacitti moved away from fashion to be taken more seriously. Part of his admiration for Halston stemmed from conversations that he had had with older women, who spoke of the designer with such a level of respect, aspiration and dreaminess,” he said. “I just thought, ‘Wow — who is this guy and what has he done?’”

The Iowa-born designer, whose given name was Roy Halston Frowick, died at the age of 57 in 1990. From Pacitti’s standpoint, Halston defined this American way of looking at style that had not existed before him. “Before that, people were slaves to Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Dior. That was all they knew. All of a sudden, here’s this guy, who is designing very simple, elegant, super chic clothes that were so unadorned that they must have looked a little grotesque at first. Over time, they became this chic simplicity that almost had a casual, laissez-faire attitude. Yet the quality was superb.”

Speaking with 10 people who knew the designer, Pacitti said he found him to be “an extremely soulful character despite his many flaws and irregularities. He was all over the place in terms of his temperament, and sometimes how he treated people and himself. He was kind of a genius.”

Suggesting that Halston could sometimes flit from one task to another, Pacitti tried to replicate that “mental acrobatic way of viewing the world.” Former Halston models Pat Cleveland, Alva Chin and Nancy North shared some insights, as did the fashion designer Ralph Rucci, who had worked for Halston early on. Chin told Pacitti how Halston could throw a piece of fabric on the floor and cut it without a pattern to create a dress. Xcel Brands’ creative director and chief creative officer Ken Downing is also pitching in. Barnett’s portrayal of Halston caused some audience members at a stage reading “to just gasp,” Pacitti said. The actor’s on-stage looks have included Raf Simons, Bottega Veneta, Tom Ford, Yves Saint Laurent, Thom Browne, Helmut Lang and London Fog, among other labels.

His research also led him to FIT and Lipscomb University, which has some of Halston’s papers and sketches. Pacitti initially hoped to base the play on Steven Gaines’ book “Simply Halston: The Untold Story,” but that had been sold to Netflix for the Ryan Murphy-directed series. Instead, he drew from the journalist Lisa Belkin and her 1987 New York Times profile of Halston “The Prisoner of Seventh Avenue.”  

“The sad part of the story is that Halston’s career at that time was really going downhill. He invested a lot in this interview thinking it would bring him back. In fact, it was a nail in the coffin. It did the opposite of what he had hoped for,” Pacitti said. “He was basically falling apart. The whole play depicts that struggle, when he is fighting to regain the rights to his name that he had signed away. Nowadays so many designers wish for that [kind of licensing opportunity]. But at the time, there was no template for it. And he finds himself scratching his head, asking why people have kicked him out of his business.”