By Joni Evans

I went to a party given by Diane von Furstenberg in the early 80s. At the time, she lived on Park Avenue in the low 60s in a floor-through apartment with bright Chinese-red lacquered walls and leopard skins on the couches (I think Denning and Fourcade decorated). I was a young editor at Simon and Schuster and not used to such environs, and when the elevator door opened directly into the apartment, I not only saw the iconic Warhol art on the walls but I saw Andy Warhol sitting in the middle of the room. There was also Woody Allen. There was also Pat Buckley. There was also Marisa Berenson. There was also Diana Ross. There was also Gil Shiva. And Jules Feiffer. And on and on, and I was dazzled and I was amazed.

I finally found one person other than me who wasn’t famous to talk to, and she told me Calvin Klein was in the room. I was thrilled, as Calvin Klein had just come onto the scene and was designing clothes that I could wear to work as well as out at night. No one had ever done that before and I thought how much I would like to meet him.

So she pointed me to a handsome gentleman who was standing all alone and I went right up to him to compliment him. I was so earnest and respectful and gushing that he asked me to sit down and he told me that no one ever told him the things I was telling him about his clothes before.

He was slightly impressed that I was an editor at Simon and Schuster and suggested that perhaps I’d like to come up to see his showroom and buy more clothes at wholesale. I was thrilled and, proving my worship even more, I then confessed I had even named my new dog, a Giant Schnauzer, after him. He was charmed. I said, yes, his name is Calvin.

At that moment I knew I had done something terribly wrong.His face seemed to crumple … like the way cartoon characters sometimes have cracks in their faces and then each individual piece falls to the floor. Suddenly, it hit me. This was not Calvin Klein. It was his archrival. It was Halston.

End Note: My sister promptly bought me a five-year subscription to Women’s Wear Daily.

Halston: Was He a Serious Artist?

By Peggy Noonan

I have just one Halston thought. Or I think it’s a thought.

When I was new to New York in the 1970s it was the Studio 54 days, and every day in the gossip pages of the newspapers you’d see a picture of Halston and Truman Capote and Liza Minnelli sitting together in — I guess — the VIP section. They always looked drunk, or high as kites. They didn’t really look like they were having fun, though I guess they were or they wouldn’t have gone back. But I remember wondering about Halston. I thought Truman Capote was a great writer who’d somehow lost touch with the fact that he was great. But I knew he was, and think to this day that he is underappreciated as an artist. But with Halston I wondered: Is he really an artist? Or is he just in style?

He was so in style that you kind of assumed he wasn’t an artist but only a marketer. Now people who care about and know about fashion are looking back at his efforts and trying to fairly judge his gifts, his work, and figure out whether or not he was actually a key figure in the making of modern fashion.

I like it that he’s being taken seriously in this way. Back in the 70s, a lot of people of great gifts made themselves look common and tiny and small. I think the ethos of the moment — "money doesn’t matter, fame doesn’t matter, world achievement doesn’t matter, the maharishi told me" — was at odds with their natural desires to rise and break through and win acclaim, and so they subverted themselves. No one in the 70s wanted to take themselves seriously, but you know, if you were serious you should have.

To view photos from Harry Benson’s private collection of Halston photographs, click here.