Fall Fashion & Accessories

In the early 1950s, while attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Roy Halston Frowick (American, 1932-1990) began a business designing and making women's hats. He gained a well-known clientele designing for the Chicago elite. He later became the head milliner for high-end New York City department store Bergdorf Goodman. His fame rose when he designed the pill-box hat that Jacqueline Kennedy wore to the inauguration of her husband, President John F. Kennedy, in 1961. In the late 1960s, Halston made the transition to women's clothing, opening a boutique on Madison Avenue in New York, and started a ready-to-wear line eventually rising to international fame in the 1970s with countless licensing agreements. 

This dress is constructed following the concept of a "single seam", a technique which Halston used in 1974, after finding inspiration in Anglo-American fashion designer Charles James (1906-78), who Halston collaborated with and who had also experimented with the use of a "single seam" as a design/construction concept. The following year, the New York Times celebrated this design with the headline “Halston Finds Road to Chic Paved With a Single Seam”, writing, “It's the story of a seam up at Halston's place—a seam that slants or spirals around the body and makes everything look neat and slim.” Fashion editor Carrie Donovan was photographed wearing an example of this dress in 1976, reprinted in Halston, ed. Steven Bluttal (Phaidon Press, 2001), p. 298.

Black knit crepe dress with an asymmetrical v-neckline, long sleeves, with loops around the neckline to hold matching crepe scarf.
Label: Halston 
Size Label: 6

Approximate Measurements:
DRESS
Shoulders: 15"
Chest: 40"
Waist: 37.5"
Hips: 38.75"
Length (high shoulder point to hem): 46"
Sleeve (center back neck to hem): 32"

SCARF
Length: 69.5"
Width: 10.5"