Tall and lean, in trademark black turtleneck and black slacks, his inviolable jaw always lifted as if addressing the future, the American fashion designer Halston stood like a capital I come to life, ego personified. Fashions come and fashions go, but the name Halston remains immortal because of this indelible imprint we carry of him in our heads—icons have seldom looked as iconographic.So when word descended from Mount Olympus that Ewan McGregor had been chosen for the title role of Halston, the Ryan Murphy–produced, five-part Netflix series based on Steven Gaines’s biography Simply Halston: The Untold Story, some of us worry-bees wondered, Could he project the height and hauteur, the chess-knight gleam, of the original item? Whatever doubts one might have harbored are dissolved with the first rounded vowels out of McGregor’s mouth, the maestro flair of his wrist as he cocks a cigarette and holds forth. And the casting of the remainder of Halston’s constellation could not be bettered. After a dowdy year in lockdown and sensual deprivation, our hunger for glamour and reckless excess is so avid that Halston’s injections of extravagance and decadence feel restorative, like being showered with confetti and champagne foam beneath a disco ball. —James Wolcott