Halston In Search Of Me

If you are sick of reading about my tales from the crypt, and looking at faded pages from the scrapbook I call my life, my tales of me in the city, then pass this post by.

Daniel Pearl at Halston in Olympic Towers 1979, photo by Valorie Hart

My memory was jolted the other night as I came upon a movie on cable, called "Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston."

As I watched, tears and memories overwhelmed me.  I went back to 1979 when my best friend Danny called me all breathless. It was 8 AM and I was, like he, getting ready for work, to go to our jobs at The Museum of Modern Art, where we were underpaid, but glamorous clerks.

This photo of Halston in 1979 in Olympic Towers where he had his office, work room, and show room,  reminds me of the one I took of Daniel Pearl in that same year in the same place

"Put on your Halston today," he demanded, " I have a surprise for you." I balked at the idea of wearing my Halston to work. It was a white hammered satin tunic with skinny leg pants, a tad dressy for the office. I told him it would look like I was out all night coming to work from Studio 54, and he said "Fabulous, just do it", and hung up in my ear.

Halston tunic and pants - Mine was not this daytime

Danny was, of course my BGF, my best gay friend. He was a librarian by day, and dreamed a life of glamour.

He taught me about glamour. Up until I met him, I did not wear make-up or fashionable clothes, or go out to fancy restaurants we both could not afford, or glam parties and openings he often scored tickets or invites for. I was his real live Barbie doll he could dress up and squire around town.

My Halston looked more like this white one I wore in 1979

So there I was at my desk at MoMA, getting teased about my attire. I took it with good nature, never revealing why I was over dressed. letting my co-workers suggest everything from it being laundry day with no clean clothes left to wear, forgetting it was day not night, and of course coming to work directly from a night out.

Danny was nowhere to be found. I rang up his desk, and another lackey answered and said he had not seen Danny all morning. Fine, I thought, he tells me to dress up and he didn't even come to work. Ha ha.

Sometime around lunch, he arrives at my desk with a a whirlwind effect of importance and drama. He was wearing a white dinner jacket with jeans. It was one of his going out at night outfits. A couple of air kisses, and he pulls out the chair I'm sitting in, and says, "Let's go, I'm taking you out for lunch."

Once out on the street we head for Fifth Avenue, and he still won't tell me where and why. He's practically flying and floating, leaving me breathless as we get to a high rise office building called Olympic Towers. He punches the elevator buttons asking me if I can now guess where we are going.
I laugh and say no. The elevator doors open, and the word Halston is emblazoned on wall. There are crowds of fancy people, the air kissing creating a very glam draft.

Danny claps his hands"I've brought you to a Halston fashion show!".

And indeed he had. We watched the show, and then hung out drinking champagne. Danny pulled a small camera from his pocket. "Come here come here," he urged as he sliced through the crowd.
He draped himself on the edge of desk with the biggest orchid plant I had ever seen. In fact the whole place was filled with orchids. "This is the prefect place. You can see out the window. Take my picture."

The photo I took of Danny - It's all there - Halston, Olympic Towers, orchids, the view with those skinny blinds, the memories

These were not the times that people took pictures at parties. Only reporters did that, and they only took pictures of famous people, not nobodies like me and Danny. It felt kind of ill mannered and illicit to whip out a camera at a party, and I must say that Danny was the first one I ever knew to bring a camera to a party. But I would do anything for him, so I snapped the photo, and then we blended back into the crowd.

Of course we got too tipsy to go back to work, because when champagne is free you drink as much as you can. By the time we left it was cocktail hour, and the work day was over, so we didn't go back to the office that day. "I'm starving."  "Me too." So off we went to Hamburger Heaven and sat at the counter eating New York Burgers (Lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise) with chocolate milkshakes.

"You looked like one of the models in your Halston, and he was checking you out." Danny always told me pretty lies, and made me feel like his Holly Golightly.

Fast forward to the present and my heart stings tugged while watching the Halston movie. There aren't many photos from those days, but I had a feeling I had the one I took of Danny that day. He had made a print and a gift of it to me. One of his other glam affectations was having Sterling Silver framed photographs all over his apartment "like the rich people do." He got me into this habit too, and I put Danny in a silver frame from Tiffany's. Years later, I sold all my silver frames, and put the photos away.

When I found the photo it started this long winded story, and as more memories came out of the vault,  I realized that I had been to a couple of parties at Halston's town house, called '101". Truthfully I do not recall how I got invited. I was arm candy then, and the de rigueur hedonism of the day often rendered me in some state of happy highness. I was often swept up in the moment of an entourage of party goers, ending up somewhere totally unplanned and spontaneous.

"101" - The Halston Townhouse - So black, mysterious, glam, and foreboding - It was designed by Paul Rudolph and was the talk of the town then not only because of Halston, but because of the architecture

I do remember the townhouse. Who could forget it? I was terrified of the open stairway, especially having to navigate it tipsy and in high heels. But someone always assisted me, and I got a house tour through throngs of people. It was just one stop of many those nights, and in a blink of a clink of a glass of champagne, I'd get piled into a limo and whisked away to the next night spot.

Those stairs terrified me, but I had to see upstairs

All this nostalgia led me to seek out someone who knew Danny then too. Danny died 13 years after that 1979 photos was taken. He died of AIDS like many of my friends did back then. Halston had died a couple of years earlier, and Danny and I both cried. Halston sold the townhouse in January of 1990, and died in March 1990 in San Francisco. They say the 1970's belonged to Halston. The 1990's belonged to the survivors and loved ones left to say goodbye and miss them forever.

Halston in his home circa 1979

Halston living room - At the time I did not understand why anyone would make their home look like a disco nightclub - You can barely see the fabulous atrium filled with exotic trees and orchids - It was amazing

Halston before the guests arrive at '101"

Halston's bedroom - He taught me about orchids - If walls could talk what would they say about Victor Hugo and Ming Vauze?

In my search I thought who could still be alive to help me reminisce. I thought of Patrica Warner, who worked at MoMA with Danny and me (and often went out with us), and later went to work with John Loring from Tiffany's. She remembered her old friends always, and when John Loring wrote a book on weddings, with Pat doing the introduction, she introduced me to the powers that be, and I had my first work as a floral designer (with on a page credit) published in that book. It also allowed for me to do some nice table top projects at Tiffany's.

I tried to find Patrica Warner on Facebook, and then Googled her. Sadly she died in 2009, and I found her New York Times obituary.

So my remembranzas are confined to a blog post, no one left alive when we were all there together, to share them with. Growing older is bittersweet.

I hobbled together images from the Internet, and am surprised how little there are of personal photos of that era. How different in this age of social media where we photo journal and publicly post our breakfasts. I think Danny would have loved it.

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