Olympic Tower

Olympic Tower is presented in the diary through sharply contrasting scenes: Halston’s polished fashion showroom, an evening’s social itinerary, and an apartment entrance notorious for its wind. Together, these glimpses make the building more than a backdrop. It is a place where clothes, appearance, media attention, and the practical details of moving through New York repeatedly converge.

Halston’s showroom and fashion in motion

The clearest view of the tower’s fashion world comes from a visit to Halston’s showroom while NBC filmed a magazine program. David Brinkley was recording rehearsals for Halston’s planned trip to the Far East; the crew intended to follow him to China. The showroom looked exceptionally rich, with orchids and a cool atmosphere, while the models moved about with brand-new luggage. The preparations were large in scale: Halston had made 500 new pieces of clothing for the trip. Some of the girls would take the clothes as payment, while others were simply taking money. The clothes themselves were described as beautiful. The scene joins the making and display of fashion to the logistics of travel and the machinery of television, turning the showroom into both a workplace and a set for a public image of Halston’s enterprise.

A photograph caption identifies Benjamin Liu, Martha Graham, Jane Holzer, and Liza Minnelli together at Halston’s Olympic Tower showroom. The group’s presence places figures from different parts of the city’s cultural and social life inside the same fashion setting. Rather than offering a record of a particular event, the caption fixes the showroom as a meeting ground as well as a place to present clothes: a room where fashion, celebrity, and performance could occupy the same frame.

A stop in the social circuit

The tower also appears as a stop in an evening organized around visits, drinks, and formal occasions. After picking up Carolina Herrera, the diarist walked with her to Halston’s, where they had drinks. Victor Hugo was there in oversized samurai pants. The party then took two limousines to a B. Altman dinner honoring American designers and benefiting the New York Public Library. At the dinner, the diarist sat with Halston and agreed to photograph only the twenty waiters. The episode gives the showroom a role in the transition between private sociability and a public benefit: it is where the party gathers before continuing elsewhere, and where clothing remains part of the evening’s play. Later, Carolina Herrera and the diarist went on to another dinner at Mr. Chow’s, extending the night beyond the tower.

The building as lived space

A separate visit reveals the tower not as a fashion display but as a residential setting. Bob arrived with a limousine and São Schlumberger, and the party went to Hélène Rochas and Kim D’Estainville’s apartment at Olympic Tower for a drink. São had just had her hair done and said she would never live there: the draft at the entrance was so strong that a hairstyle could be ruined on arrival. She knew of women who had moved out for that reason. Before she entered, the others went in first and had someone close the inner door; only then was the wind blocked and São able to come in. The small negotiation with the door turns an architectural inconvenience into an immediate social concern, where an interior’s comfort is measured by its effect on appearance.

The showroom returned to the diary as a place of celebration when Halston held a birthday party there for Hiro. From that gathering, Victor proposed going downtown to the newly opened Saint nightclub in the former Village Theater. The sequence gives the showroom a recurring function in these accounts: it hosts its own parties and serves as a point of departure into the city’s nightlife. Across the scenes, Olympic Tower is associated not with a single defining event but with fashion work, social arrivals, and the careful management of how people look as they move between rooms and occasions.