In the 1960s, early in his career as a milliner for New York’s Bergdorf Goodman, Roy Halston Frowick, who would come to be known only by that middle name, attended a dinner in the Hamptons at which two heterosexual men refused to be seated at the same table as, in their words, a “f—ot.”
While hardly an inciting incident, the variations on this sort of moment tend to hover over the careers of accomplished queer people, driving them to be better at their jobs in a world that still denigrates their humanity, and it also hovers over “Halston,” a sleek documentary from director Frédéric Tcheng (“Dior and I”) about the American fashion designer’s legendary career and rocky relationship with business interests.