Is there anyone who didn’t love that amazing slinky white dress in the beginning of Sex and the City 2 ? Or what about that gorgeous orange maxi dress that Carrie wore on her jaunt down the beach in Abu Dhabi, and that royal blue pleated number that she sashayed through the streets of New York in? All of the above were part of the Heritage Halston line -the diffusion line that Parker was appointed Chief Creative of midway through the movies production.
Immediately following the release of the film HH and SJP”s involvement with the line had bloggers and publications from In Style to Vogue magazine singing praises about the line. Sadly, all the hoopla has turned into a swan song for Parker and many are speculating soon to follow is Harvey Weinstein.
Weinstein and Hilco Consumer Capital acquired the brand in 2007, but after a tumultuous last year or two the American fashion house continues to struggle. As recently as this April, Hilco began looking for investors to help save the brand or alternatively a buyer who would take it over completely. Max Azria is said to be one of three parties interested and with Parkers departure and rumors of Weinstein’s exit there’s nothing to stand in the way of a revitalization.
The August issue of Vogue was the first to break the story and reports have indicated that Parker was to net approximately $13 million during her four year deal with the fashion house. As reported to WWD
Weinstein and Parker are just two of several executives who have joined and subsequently left Halston under the current ownership. Halston chief executive officer Bonnie Takhar also left the company and, recently, there has been some speculation that the firm may not renew its contract with Schwab unless he relocates from London, where he designs his own, namesake line, to New York, where Halston is based.
Executive shuffles have become something of the norm at Halston, which had its heyday in the late Seventies when its charismatic namesake designer was a glamorous fixture at Studio 54 and dressed the global celebrity jet set. Since his death in 1990, there have been numerous attempts to revive the label, with designers Randolph Duke, Kevan Hall, Craig Natiello, Piyawat Pattanapuckdee, Bradley Bayou and Marco Zanini passing through the company’s doors. None succeeded at restoring Halston’s position as a premier American fashion brand.
The move to bring in Parker raised many eyebrows, but it was also seen as a bold experiment and out-of-the-box approach. Unlike Victoria Beckham and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, who have made successful transitions into fashion, Parker never put her entertainment projects on the back burner to focus exclusively on Halston and instead spent months on movie sets when she might have been a fixture in Halston’s showroom.
Parker never made a secret of her inexperience. “You could make many arguments to why I am not qualified,” she told WWD at the time of her hire. “I would say that I am very aware of the enormity of the titles, and how important they are, and my response is that they [the board] felt confident in their decisions.”
