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While some may argue the brands’ influence is far from dead with it’s enclusion into some of the country’s most elite department stores, Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus included, its a safe bet to assume, Halston is currently on life support. It is common knowledge that just as if the house were a person, the brand’s quality of life is in rapid decline, and when in dire circumstance one must decide when comes the appropriate time to pull the plug?

Long gone, are the hey days of Bill Blass, Bonnie Cashin, Pierre Cardin and Emanuel Ungaro. These brand’s, some still around, no longer represent the stainless steel image of the jet set, but are rather ghosts of their former selves, replaced by younger, sexier, and more daring design houses, like The Row and William Rast. Despite this era of Young Hollywood glamour, we now live in, lest us not forget the man who made celebrity and fashion synonymous, a la Bianca Jagger, Liza Minelli, and countless other personalities of the time. Halston was also one of the first public gay figures to ever die of HIV, indirectly giving voice to the millions of gay men dying of the same disease at the time.

While there was recently a documentary made about the designer, interviewing some of his most famous and distinguished friends, Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston, (2010) and while his current legacy may now be tainted, what he created, and the women he dressed, made him an American icon.

Tags: celebrity, Halston, Hollywood, jet set, Sarah Jessica Parker