I’ve written about the Girl Scout tie-ins to the PBS mini-series Atlantic Crossing. But wait …. that’s not the only current TV series with a Girl Scout connection.
Netflix has released a series about fashion designer Halston. Ewan McGregor plays the titular character.
The PR folks at Netflix have done a splendid job of drumming up interest in a man who died in 1990.
The New York Times, Washington Post, Esquire, The New Yorker, Variety, and other news outlets took the hint and have recently published features about Halston’s career. Much is made of his glamorous friends and wild nights at Studio 54. Liza, Liza, Liza.
As far as I can tell, one major project has been overlooked in the accompanying Halston media campaign–and I highly doubt it will be mentioned in the TV series.
Believe it or not, Halston designed uniforms for adult Girl Scouts. Girl Scout executives approached him about the project, and he agreed to do so on a pro bono basis. Normally, his fee would have been between $50,000 and $100,000.
He was enthusiastic about the Girl Scout project.
The Girl Scouts are a terrific organization and anyone who could help them should.
Bernadine Morris, “No Sequins This Time,” New York Times (May 17, 1978): C9.
Young Roy Halston Frowick was an Eagle Scout himself.
Why did the Girl Scouts seek a high-end fashion brand, such as a Halston design?
This was not the first time. Earlier adult uniforms were designed by Mainbocher (left) and Stella Sloat (center). In the 1980s, Bill Blass created a wardrobe for leaders (right).
GSUSA gave its own answer in Leader Magazine:
Why? Because you wanted a uniform that was high-fashion, but not too “way out”–a uniform for today’s woman. Involved. Efficient. Alive!
Leader, May/June 1978.
The results debuted in May 1978.
The collection was made of sage green polyester gabardine fabric with mix and match pieces. An ivory blouse and scarf completed the look.
The design was quite similar to the brown Braniff flight attendant uniform that Halston designed one year before the Girl Scout ensemble.
Some of the headwear, however, seems out of place. The woman on the right in the Girl Scout photo is wearing a pillbox hat. That makes sense as Halston’s big break came in designing the pillbox hat Jacqueline Kennedy wore at the 1961 Presidential Inauguration.
But what IS that headgear on the left? It appears to be a visor, and indeed it is a visor. There is no good explanation for the visor. Visors are worn on tennis courts and golf greens, not in board rooms or committee meetings. The whole visor idea must have been conceived during one of Halston’s cocaine-booze-rent boy binges. Or, perhaps it came during a hangover, as it certainly is nausea-inducing.
It must not have been popular, either. When the Nassau County (NY) Museum of Art held a Halston retrospective in 2017, finding a visor for the Girl Scout exhibit took all of the king’s horses and all of the king’s men to locate.
Given the, um, colorful life of Halston depicted in the Netflix series, perhaps it is just as well that there isn’t a scene with the Girl Scouts.
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