In his buzzy new memoir “The Chiffon Trenches,” André Leon Talley reveals that legendary dressmaker Halston had an fascinating approach of wrapping up his supper events.
“Halston used to have me over for dinner,” the 70-year-old Vogue veteran writes, “and he would serve a baked potato with caviar and bitter cream. For dessert: a small mountain of high-class cocaine served in an Elsa Peretti sterling silver bowl.”
Added Talley, “I snorted a line or two, to be well mannered to my host, and that was it. I by no means wished to really feel out of my sphere of management. My future was to not be hooked on coke.”
Born Roy Halston Frowick, the late American couturier usually hosted over-the-top, debaucherous soirées for the likes of Andy Warhol, Liza Minnelli, Bianca Jagger and Diane von Furstenberg at his NYC “celebration pad.”
However Halston’s love of medicine was hardly uncommon within the period of Studio 54, Talley writes: “The brand new wave of designers have been working, loving and residing on a daily food regimen of cocaine, then the drug du jour … Halston thrived on it. He was identified to partake and afterward keep up and alter a complete assortment in a single day. Presto: a masterpiece.”
Out Wednesday, Talley’s ebook was bumped up from its preliminary September launch date due to breathless media protection of the memoir’s extra scandalous passages in regards to the writer’s former boss, Anna Wintour.
In “The Chiffon Trenches” — which, curiously, Talley has referred to as a “love letter” to the long-lasting editrix — the Condé Nast vet describes Wintour as “ruthless” and “not succesful” of “human kindness.”