Once their friendship had begun, Liza Minnelli and Halston were all but inseparable. He was her go-to designer for any kind of event where there would be photographers. He famously put her in a canary yellow gown for the 1973 Academy Awards, where Liza took an Oscar for Best Actress for the film “Cabaret.” He also personally decorated her Manhattan apartment. And Liza supported her friend any way she could. She was always up for adding a bit of pizzazz to his runway shows, lending her charisma and star power to his work. According to WWD, she sang and danced at the famous fashion show known as the “Battle of Versailles,” which pitted Halton and four other American fashion designers against five French couturiers, including the legendary Yves Saint Laurent. Minnelli’s participation indeed helped out the American dressmakers, for after the show, WWD ran the headline: “Americans came, they sewed, they conquered.”

Halston’s hard-partying lifestyle eventually led to his ousting from his own design company in the 1980s, but Minnelli always stood by his side until his death in 1990. As Vanity Fair recalls, she was cohost at a 1992 tribute to Halston, where she remembered him as someone who was always “daring me to be better than I ever thought I could be.”