The new limited series Halston from hitmaker Ryan Murphy stars Ewan McGregor as fashion designer Halston (born Roy Halston Frowick). With filming locations predominantly in New York City, the sets and scenes recreate the hedonism of 1970s and 1980s New York. Halston also features Bill Pullman, Rory Culkin (from Succession), Vera Farmiga, and Krysta Rodriguez who plays Liza Minelli. Expect sex, drama and high fashion. Untapped New York’s very own Nicole Saraniero also has a spot playing a photographer in a fashion show! Without further ado, Here are the fabulous filming locations from Halston!
Bergdorf Goodman
After a quick flashback to Halston’s early childhood on Indiana, the first episode cuts quickly to Fifth Avenue where Halston crosses the Pulitzer Fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel and enters Bergdorf Goodman department store. The venerable fashion institution was founded in 1899 and once had a 17-room penthouse apartment on top. The interior scenes at Bergdorf Goodman, where people are lining up to buy Halston’s pillbox hat which Jackie Kennedy wore at JFK‘s inauguration, are filmed inside the real store on 58th Street and Fifth Avenue. Unfortunately for Halston, the trend was short-lived, when hats became less trendy.
Halston finds a raw, run-down building on 68th Street and Madison Avenue to make his first studio. The ground floor later becomes his first storefront, located at 813 Madison Avenue.
Here, he has assembled his first team consisting of an illustrator Joe Eula, a fit model (Elsa Peretti of later Tiffany’s jewelry fame), and Joel Schumacher (the later film director, screenwriter and producer, played in Halston by Rory Culkin) who got his start in interior design and fashion design. Schumacher met Halston during the fashion designer’s Bergdorf hat days.
Halston takes a walk with Eleanor Lambert, a PR fashion executive who tries to convince him to do a fashion show at Versailles, to help raise funds for its restoration. It will be a competition with multiple designers including Givenchy, Oscar de la Renta and possibly Anne Klein and Bill Blass.
Halston and Eleanor walk across the Bow Bridge and down the mall of Central Park. You may remember actress Kelly Bishop, who plays Eleanor, as Emily Gilmore on Gilmore Girls.
Halston and Eleanor end at the Park Lane Hotel at 36 Central Park South’s second floor restaurant with the large windows overlooking the park.
There, Eleanor introduces him to David Mahoney, consumer product executive whose company Norton Simon Inc. controlled companies like Canada Dry, Hunts Food and Industries and the McCall Corporation. Mahoney wants to invest in Halston, and get him to manufacture fashion for the masses.
Halston and his entourage, including Eleanor and Mahoney, land in Paris. The Art Deco style airport is actually filmed in the central branch of Brooklyn Public Library.
You will recognize the incredible front doors and rotunda lobby. The set has added signs like Arrivés/Arrivals, gate signs, newsstand, tarmac signs, security, and more.
Halston agrees to do the show in Versailles, pressured by Eleanor and with Norton Simon covering all the costs. In New York City, when a production needs a grand mansion, the Alder Manor in Yonkers is the location where all the fashion designers are putting the last touches on their collections for the show at Versailles.
Built as the W.B. Thompson Mansion, it later served as a Catholic school, a college, and later run by an Irish-American organization called Tara Circle. The Alder Manor is often rented out for events and for film shoots. The shoot takes across a large number of rooms in the Alder Manor, showcasing the beautify of this site. The grounds of Versailles, shown in the backdrop of the terraces, is added via CGI.
The actual fashion show takes place at Loew’s Jersey Theatre, one of the five Loews Wonder theaters in the New York City area. The opulence of these theaters make it a prime filming location. The Loew’s Jersey Theatre, located in New York, was more recently a filming location for Joker and Dickinson.
The Jersey Theatre is in need of extensive restoration, particularly in the theater portion, so the film shoots we’ve seen all take place inside the lobby. In Dickinson, the lobby was transformed into an opera house, here, to Versailles.
With new success, Halston’s offices are relocated in the Olympic Tower at 641 Fifth Avenue with a prime view of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He specifically asks Mahoney for a new atelier as he’s “outgrown” his studio. He asks for “A new one, a fancy one….I’ve seen a place in Olympic Tower I think I could be creative one. Felt like I was floating in the clouds.””
The skyscraper was built in 1973 by the firm Skimore, Owings and Merrill (SOM). Halston takes a space on the 21st floor of the Olympic Tower. Like all things Halston, he has it designed to the T with interior decor from Elsa Peretti’s works at Tiffany’s. Today, the ground floor retail at Olympic Tower is known for the Armani Exchange store, which has been located there for decades.
Halston was often photographed at the legendary nightclub Studio 54 with the likes of Liza Minelli and Andy Warhol. Halston was a regular and even threw an over-the-top birthday party for Biana Jagger, a scene shown in Halston where she enters on a white horse.
Michelle is the founder of Untapped New York and the author of The Art Spy (HarperOne, forthcoming) Secret Brooklyn, Secret New York Hidden Bars & Restaurants, and Broadway. michelleyoungwriter.com
