New York-based costume designer Jeriana San Juan [1] is behind the fashion in Netflix's new miniseries Halston [2], which explores the life of the iconic American designer [3] in the '70s. San Juan, who has also worked on shows you might have heard of such as Saturday Night Live and Gossip Girl, created mostly every piece you see in the five episodes, which were written by Ryan Murphy and directed by Daniel Minahan.
"Once you start searching for vintage Halston, people start expanding your network and going, 'Well, I don't have anything, but I know somebody who has Ultrasuede.'"
"It was really a matter of designing in the voice of someone else, which is a fun exercise," she told POPSUGAR. A fun exercise, sure, or just about the most Herculean task someone could take on. But San Juan, an industry vet, has connections and sourced plenty of vintage when she could.
"A lot of daily finds were on The RealReal [4], which I loved using because it's so easy to find things by designer, and I really wanted to see some of those vintage Missoni knits from the '70s, for example. I found people who were designer vintage collectors willing to loan or sell me pieces. Once you start searching for vintage Halston, people start expanding your network and going, 'Well, I don't have anything, but I know somebody who has Ultrasuede,'" San Juan said, calling out Halston's signature decadent take on the material, which was an important part of his story. "I really had to sniff it out. I felt like a private investigator when I was first starting because I had to go down some wormholes to find specifically Halston vintage collectors."
The cast of the Netflix series [5] had the utmost respect for San Juan's creativity. I also talked to actor Gian Franco Rodriguez [6], who plays Halston's love interest Victor Hugo, who has the most colourful demeanour of all the characters in the show. "Please watch the show to see Jeriana's work of art. Every piece of clothing for every single character is a statement, and we hope people get to appreciate that and come to love her work as much as we all did," he told POPSUGAR.
Rodriguez is right. After watching Halston, I couldn't help but sift through old pictures from decades past to compare Jeriana's costumes to the wardrobes of the famous people depicted here — Liza Minnelli [7] (played by Krysta Rodriguez [8]) and Elsa Peretti (Rebecca Dayan) included. The portrayals are uncanny, and it's all thanks to San Juan's research and talent. "I thought it was important for myself to read everything I possibly could and consume every image I could. I came in wanting to do the most accurate representation of it all, but then I had to wear another hat as a costume designer where I had to know when to speak the truth accurately and when I could expand and take the story and run with it in order to tell a better story . . . it didn't always involve directly copying."
Ahead, read more from my interviews with Jeriana San Juan and Gian Franco Rodriguez, and scroll through the photos that prove what I now know to be true: conjuring up the fashion in Halston's life all came down to detail.
Ewan McGregor as Halston
"Ewan loved this coat so much that I think he helped manifest it in white, and then later in red . . . he just felt more glamorous wearing it."
"The first time I tried Halston's double-faced wool trench coat on Ewan, he was obsessed with touching it because it was made of this really beautiful, black cashmere," San Juan recalled. "One of the things people who knew Halston personally told me was that he owned the best of the best in terms of fabrics, down to his shoes — he really only wore exquisite textiles. Through looking at pictures of him over the course of his life, I realised his silhouettes didn't change a lot, so I decided to remake that coat in white. He entered this period of his life where he started doing a lot of cocaine, skewing his palette more towards white, which felt so ultra disco. I played with little details in terms of length and time period to help age or de-age him. But Ewan loved this coat so much that I think he helped manifest it in white, and then later in red, because he loved working with it on camera and he just felt more glamorous wearing it."
Krysta Rodriguez as Liza Minnelli
Some of Liza's looks in the series feel spot-on — even down to the way she knots her sweater over her shoulders, or wears the belt with oversize hardware for her arrival at Versailles (which San Juan mentioned was her favourite scene to design). Liza, being a longtime friend of Halston [10] throughout his life and career, wore his designs to perform, sat front row at his runway shows, and partied with Andy Warhol, Victor Hugo, Elsa Peretti, and crew at Studio 54.
Rebecca Dayan as Elsa Peretti
Elsa Peretti, Halston's bohemian muse who went on to become a famous jewellery designer, tried on many of the looks he was dreaming up in his studio and modelled for him. "I found a way to tell Halston's journey first and then used the collections as a way to supplement and highlight some of his signature colours throughout the arc of his career," San Juan explained of the clothes she designed to make up Halston's actual collections. "There were two colour palettes: the colour palette of Halston and what colours were going to create the right moods through certain arcs of his journey and then the colour palette of the collections, which we were really inspired by — whether it was some of the soft pastels that he was using at Versailles or the bright, saturated colours he was using in the '80s."
Gian Franco Rodriguez as Victor Hugo
"I am wearing a jockstrap in every scene, regardless if I undressed or not."
When I talked to Venezuelan-born actor Gian Franco Rodriguez [11], who stars as Halston's love interest Victor Hugo, he was delighted to call out the pieces that really helped him slip into character, which included his jockstrap and the bracelets he stacked on his wrists. His favourite outfit, hands down? "The fur jacket with the see-through mesh, diamond top, white jeans, and white boots at Studio 54. That outfit made me feel like such a rock star. At some point I mentioned I just wanted to shoot every scene in the show wearing that. I still wish I could just go to sleep wearing that coat every night. How could somebody start the day on a bad note waking up like that?" he said, going on to explain how his character affected the presence he brought to his looks. "Victor loved the spotlight, he loved being exposed, so there was plenty of material for me to look at that told me a lot about his personality. I am wearing a jockstrap in every scene, regardless if I undressed or not. The boots also became a character thing for me and they affected my way of walking. I enjoyed making those discoveries in the process."
"One of my favourite pictures is Victor wearing some type of football player costume with an interesting head piece. He liked to create stuff like that and be extravagant," Gian Franco said, explaining that his phone is packed with photos of Victor Hugo now, some of which Andy Warhol took. "Jeriana did such an amazing job even with that outfit, which you only see me wearing for a second in the background when Bianca Jagger comes into the studio on the horse. That's what made being part of this show so special — everybody was so into the details."
