With Love Halston: The Next Generation carries a fashion legacy forward

Fashion and art students draw on Lipscomb’s Halston archive to reimagine the iconic designer’s legacy for a new generation

Robin Ghosh  |  10/06/2026

Inside Lipscomb University’s Halston archive, eight fashion students have been studying original garments, patterns, sketches and runway photos — even turning garments inside out to understand how one of America’s most influential fashion designers constructed his iconic pieces.

Their task is not merely to copy Halston’s work, but to explore what it can become in their own hands.

That idea is at the heart of With Love Halston: The Next Generation, a fall exhibition presented by the Department of Fashion, Art & Design in collaboration with the With Love Halston Foundation. The exhibition brings together Halston archival materials, original garments created by Lipscomb fashion students for the Foundation’s student design competition and artworks by Lipscomb art students created in response to each design.

For Charlotte Poling, chair of Lipscomb’s fashion program, the collaboration gives students an opportunity to honor Halston’s legacy while developing their own identities as designers.

“This is my work. I want it to look like me, but be inspired by Halston, not copy Halston,” Poling said of the challenge facing students. “It might be one component of the garment that is influenced by Halston, and the rest of it is very much the designer’s choice.”

Lipscomb has housed one of the nation’s largest Halston collections for approximately two decades. According to Poling, it includes about 100 garments and 54 boxes of original patterns as well as sketches by fashion illustrator Joe Eula, runway photographs, press books, business materials and other items documenting Halston’s storied career.

For junior fashion design major Avry Earnshaw, that access offered a rare opportunity to study not only what Halston designed, but how he constructed it.

“He was a genius constructor,” Earnshaw said. “One of my favorite things about fashion design is the construction of the overall garment. Looking at his pieces, trying to recreate some of them, I really got stumped on how he was able to achieve some of these things.”

The eight participating designers used their study of the archive as a starting point for Halston-inspired original garments. Along the way, they faced a unique creative challenge: using the language of a legendary designer while maintaining their own identities.

“Every fashion student right now is trying to find the line between who am I as a designer, who is Halston as a brand, and where do those two things meet?” Earnshaw said.

That balance has taken a different form for each student. Some have drawn from Halston’s use of color, while others have responded to his shapes, patterns, fabrics or construction techniques.

“It’s translated differently for every single designer,” Poling said. “More than anything, they’ve just been pushed outside their comfort zone and encouraged to do something that they’ve never done before.”

For Earnshaw, studying Halston’s work is also about understanding the past as a foundation for what comes next.

“It’s important to know the history of fashion so we don’t lose those techniques and styles,” Earnshaw said. “We can take those things and use them to design for the future.”

Adding another creative dimension to the exhibition, each student designer has been paired with a Lipscomb art student who is creating an original work in response to the garment.

For Poling, that interdisciplinary component is central to the project.

“That is the exhibition,” she said. “The CEA is cross-collaborative. We are constantly finding ways for our students to collaborate with each other across disciplines.”

Sophomore studio art major Ella Baxter, who is minoring in graphic design, found Halston’s restrained approach an interesting creative challenge.

“He is very minimal, and I’m the opposite,” Baxter said. “I am a maximalist.”

Baxter has been responding to her fashion partner’s mood board, sketches and fabric selections while considering how materials such as fabric, leather and stitching could become part of her own work.

“It feels more like a game of ping pong,” she said. “We’re going back and forth building off of each other’s foundation.”

When the works are exhibited together, Baxter hopes viewers will see more than a garment placed beside a work of art. She wants each piece to change how the other is experienced.

“I want there to be a solid connection between them, where they’re both enhancing the other,” Baxter said. “I want the painting to emphasize the garment’s details, and I’m hoping the garment can emphasize the details of my painting. I want them to create a beautiful balance together.”

The fashion students’ work will also be featured in the With Love Halston Foundation’s student design competition, culminating Oct. 17 with a Halston celebration at 1 Hotel Nashville.

Together, the archive, garments and artworks showcase a legacy that is not just being preserved, but continually interpreted.

For Baxter, that is part of the value of emerging artists engaging with historical work.

“It’s not just something lost and forgotten,” she said, “but that can be remembered and reimagined.”

And for Poling, seeing a new generation build upon that history offers something even more fundamental.

“Hope for the future,” she said. “This is the future of design.”

With Love Halston: The Next Generation opens Oct. 15 with a reception from 5:30-7 p.m. at the John C. Hutcheson Gallery in Beaman Library. The exhibition will remain on view through Nov. 14.