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It is among the best scenes in the series. He selects orchids, tobacco, and his lover’s jockstrap. There’s a scene in episode three where Halston sits down with a perfumer to develop the wildly successful Halston perfume, and she asks him to bring in scents that are meaningful to him.

Sometimes his sadness is also because he’s a semi-closeted gay man, but Halston’s no more nuanced on that front, either.

Halston ewan mcgregor series#

Every time the series needs to refer back to some pain that drives Halston’s ambition, it’s to this sketchy caricature of an unhappy childhood. And yet it is also the only real exploration of Halston’s inner life. There’s nothing particular about any of this flashback material it is as smoothly featureless as a dressmaker’s model. The first episode opens with an abrupt punch of flashback, like being socked in the stomach by knuckles tattooed with “tragic backstory”: a dreary Midwestern farmhouse, a sad child (Halston, naturally), a yelling father, the gift of a handmade feathered hat to cheer up his mom. The writing is no more impressive structurally, either. Likewise, in case you’re ever unsure about whether Halston is happy, the odds are pretty good that he’ll slam open a door and yell, I’m Halston! I’m supposed to be happy but I’m not! Someone will always arrive to say, Halston, the company is not doing well. There’s no need to wonder if the company is doing well, and there’s definitely no need to communicate that through subtle, uneasy changes in tone.

Halston ewan mcgregor how to#

That certainly seems like the case on the level of dialogue characters are perpetually issuing blunt, expositional proclamations to tell the viewer how to feel at each new stage. The less charitable reading is that the writing in Halston is simply lazy. By my count, the last two episodes average one “Halston” per minute. The word becomes empty because it is omnipresent. From that vantage point, the inescapable drumbeat of Halston, Halston, Halston in the dialogue could be read as a purposeful reenactment of the exact trap that caught Halston himself. Brand dilution is the story’s chief tragedy - which is really saying something, given that its subject dies of AIDS. Once it was on everything, the Halston name meant nothing. He wanted Halston to be a bespoke, rarefied brand, but fear and carelessness turned the name into ubiquitous department-store fodder. Portrayed by Ewan McGregor, Halston is a man so desperate to turn himself into a legend that he trades away his name too freely. As it’s told here, the Halston story is entirely about the name. There’s a generous way to read this absurd proliferation.

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“Good morning, Halston.” “You’re an asshole, Halston!” “Halston, you’re a genius!” “You’re out of control, Halston!” From somewhere midway through episode three until the series conclusion at the end of episode five, I counted 114 Halstons, plus three times someone called him “H” to shake things up. Around the middle of the third episode of Halston, thanks to a mixture of boredom and fascination, I started counting every time someone said the name “Halston.” The new Netflix limited series is about the fashion designer Roy Halston, and sometimes characters say the name to point at the brand: “This bottle says ‘Halston!’” or “Now that’s a Halston.” Often it’s just part of the dialogue, an unrelenting verbal tic.