Inside Issue 25 of 10 Men Australia - MUSIC, TALENT, CREATIVE - Tony Marcus discusses Halston Classic, the first fragrance launched in 1975, the same year that David Bowie released ‘Young Americans’. Both the fragrance and album reflected the energy of the era.

Halston’s first perfume, 1975’s Halston Classic, is a sensual one. I have bought vintage bottles to get a feeling for the scent and it still has the addictive note recalled by those who knew it in the 1970s and 1980s. There is a rich peach note, but it’s not ripe or sugared. It is a kind of peach. And the perfume breaks over peach flesh like a drug. There are overwhelming waves of white powder, each more beautiful than the last. Some writers spotted a marmalade note. Others, thinking of Halston’s associations with Studio 54, have said it recalls the club’s leathery sex. But Classic was released two years before Studio 54 opened. So that cannot be.

In 1973, Halston was the golden boy of American fashion. His companies generated $30 million plus in retail. That year, he sold his name to the firm Norton Simon Industries for dollars and stock options. Its first move was to make a fragrance. Before this, Halston said, everyone (Chanel, Arden, Revlon, Palmolive) had been asking for a perfume. But the deal was never right. If you read Steven Gaines’s 1991 biography Simply Halston it’s clear that, in those days, he was a workaholic. That was how he approached his fashion and how he dealt with his entrée into perfume. He spent two months sniffing oils, learning to discriminate smells. Involved in every aspect of his perfume, he had final say on advertising, ad copy and packaging, even specifying the cardboard and cellophane to be used.

“Sweetheart,” he told a journalist at the time, “it was absolutely horrendous. For months and months I worked. It was an incredible experience.”

Classic sold 1.5 million bottles within 90 days of its launch. The nose was Bernard Chant, who also made the dry, powdery Cabochard and Aramis. It is not unreasonable to note that Halston’s perfume was also pleasingly adult and dry. Within two years it had generated $85 million in sales. It was the second-largest-selling scent in history: Chanel No.5 was the first.

“The responsibility was all on my shoulders,” Halston said. “It’s my fragrance and I made it. It was the most difficult design I’ve ever done.”

The original perfume is no longer in production. Halston’s label has passed through different owners and formulations. And key ingredients like oakmoss are no longer used (it was classified as an allergen). The original ‘parfum’ is a cult item and priced accordingly. At exactly the same time in 1974 that Halston was creating his first perfume, David Bowie was recording Young Americans at Philly’s Sigma Sound Studios. Bowie’s new guitarist Carlos Alomar had bought along some colleagues from Harlem’s Apollo Theatre, including backing singer Luther Vandross. At that point in his life, Vandross was a college dropout, a struggling singer, a massive Diana Ross fan and a 23-year-old who still lived in his mother’s flat in the Bronx. When Luther arrived at Sigma they were playing back an early version of the album’s title track. Carlos asked Luther what he thought. Luther listened…

“You know,” he said, “that sounds very good. But there’s a big chunk missing. It needs a catchphrase.”

In response, Luther came up with the section, “All-right, all-right, he wants the Young Americans, Young Americans…” and started to work with the other backing singers. At that point no one had seen Bowie. But he was in the control room, out of sight yet listening. And as Luther’s arrangement formed, Bowie came rushing out and said, “I love it.” Turning to Luther, he said, “Who are you?” I guess talent can spot talent, as Bowie then hired Luther to work on the vocal arrangements. Bowie even covered one of Vandross’s songs on the album, Funky Music (Is a Part of Me), adding his own lyrics and renaming it Fascination. Sax player David Sanborn was clear about Luther’s contribution to Bowie’s ‘breakthrough’ album in the States. “Young Americans was a turning point for Bowie,” said Sanborn (who played on the album, and on 1974’s Diamond Dogs Tour). “And Luther was certainly instrumental in the success of that record. There’s almost as much of him on that record as there is of Bowie.”

One song from Young Americans was so complex, in terms of vocal harmonies, that Bowie never performed it live. Right is not a well-known Bowie song (I think), but it may be one of his best. The song is elegiac, but it has a ‘fusion’ or funk sound. Bowie’s own vocal is dry and romantic, but he is matched by the backing vocals that roll like something from The Supremes or Aretha. I assume some of this is Luther’s contribution. Whoever is responsible for this or that aspect of Right has brought about one of Bowie and Luther’s best works. It deserves to be better known.

I’ve been listening to Right and sniffing Halston and wondering if they match. Young Americans and Halston’s Classic were made at the same time within a few blocks of each other (Bowie finished the album in New York’s Record Plant and Electric Lady studios). Both are sensual, positive, sophisticated. The perfume is an image of the pre-Studio 54 Halston, when his name was a byword for elegance and success. The song feels expensive but world-weary; Bowie doing Swann or Proust. I could align it with Halston’s own narrative but the only reference to music in Halston’s biography, prior to Studio 54, states he used to play Mozart from a hidden speaker in his New York house. The house at 101 East 63rd Street was (when Halston bought it) one of the few modernist spaces in Manhattan. Designed by Paul Rudolph, it is a cube of dark glass with vast open spaces, bare walls and floating catwalks.

the cover of David Bowie’s ‘Young Americans’ (1975), photographed by Eric Stephen Jacobs

They all pass each other in the night. Luther was obsessed with Diana Ross, Cissy Houston, Patti LaBelle and Aretha. As a teenager he would play their records over and over, studying the harmonies. In a scene from the BBC documentary Cracked Actor (filmed in 1974) Bowie is in his limousine, listening to Aretha’s (You Make Me Feel) Like a Natural Woman over and over. When Luther toured with Bowie that year, he looked out into the audience at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles and there, seated not too far from Michael Jackson… there… there was Diana Ross. Bowie would pass within metres of Halston at Studio 54. Diana Ross danced at Studio 54. Iman modelled for Halston. I doubt Luther visited Studio 54 but he sang on all the great records of that era. He sang on the Sister Sledge records. He sang on the Chic records. You can hear Luther on We Are Family.

“I kept saying to [Chic],” said Luther, “You know what, I’m too loud. And they kept saying, ‘Man, just move closer to the microphone…’”

Somehow, they are a match: Bowie and Luther’s Right, Bowie’s Young Americans and Halston’s perfume. All of them are meticulous creations. But there must be something else, like the energy or feeling of the time.

The dry aspect of Classic is probably from the oakmoss. And the perfume paid a debt to the chypre tradition in perfume where oakmoss, among other ingredients, created a certain kind of depth and base. Of the legendary chypres, most perfume writers have noted that Guerlain’s classic Mitsouko has retained its character despite the oakmoss ban and, among its qualities, the scent has a dry and adult aspect. But where Halston opens with sensual notes, Mitsouko (from 1919) reveals its sensuality much later. I had pegged Classic as a conservative perfume because of the ingredients and the build, but I guess it’s sexy too. Sexier than most modern perfumes. But perhaps that’s another story.

Shop the Mood

Vintage Halston perfume: beautiful but expensive. Worth it if you can find a bottle. Miniatures are a good place to start.

Halston Cologne: there is a current formulation that is still in the shops. It is very cheap (to buy) and not without merit. It is sensual, Halston-ish and comes on like a fey, spicy masculine. But I don’t think it compares well to the vintage parfum.

Guerlain’s Mitsouko: one of the greats of classical French perfumery. It is dry and sensual, among other wonders. It may be an interesting foil to the vintage Halston and, unlike Classic, it is still available.

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