Business

Sarah Jessica Parker and Harvey Weinstein cash out stakes in Halston

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Sarah Jessica Parker and Harvey Weinstein are taking a painful final markdown at Halston.

Parker, famous for playing Carrie Bradshaw in “Sex and the City,” is getting a payout of more than $3 million in exchange for her ownership stake in the flailing fashion label — as well as an exit from the remainder of her contract as a Halston designer, The Post has learned.

Meanwhile, Hollywood mogul Weinstein is selling his stake in Halston, which had approached 10 percent, for between $1 million and $1.5 million, as the company finalizes a restructuring of its mounting debt load that could be announced as soon as today, sources said.

Those sums, while tidy by the standards of a struggling fashion brand, are paltry compared with what Parker and Weinstein had hoped to reap by returning Halston to the prominence it enjoyed in the ’70s and ’80s.

Parker, who had been designing a lower-price line called Halston Heritage, is ditching a contract that had entitled her to nearly $10 million over the next 3-½ years, according to one source close to the actress.

“Sarah felt that she has the opportunity to do a lot more with herself, and make a lot more money in the process, if she goes elsewhere,” according to the source, adding, “she was tired of all the conflict.”

Indeed, fashion sources said that Halston has been rocked this year by arguments between Weinstein and executives at Hilco, a Chicago-based liquidation firm that took control of Halston in 2007 in a $25 million buyout.

“There have been a lot of screaming matches,” a Halston insider told The Post. “They really couldn’t agree on too much — the management team, expenses, the company’s structure.”

Reached by phone yesterday, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Green declined to comment.

At the same time, the ranks at Halston’s SoHo headquarters have been devastated. Marios Schwab, the London designer hired in 2009 to produce the company’s top line, has been “MIA for months,” according to one source. And this spring, Halston laid off “pretty much its entire sales team,” according to a SoHo source.

“Basically, this means they’re not selling anything, and they’re really not in business,” the source added. “They’re keeping it going so people believe there’s a body and not a corpse.”

Nevertheless, Halston has attracted interest from big fashion companies including Kellwood, which lately has stalked upscale labels including Catherine Malandrino. Halston also has seen interest from a China-based firm that considered funding a revival of its operations, according to one source.

Hilco itself is also weighing a licensing strategy for Halston as it restructures the label’s finances, sources said.

“I was very interested in pursuing a diversified business model that went beyond entertainment, and my involvement in Halston reflected that,” Weinstein said. “But over the past year or so, I realized that I wanted to concentrate my energies on entertainment.”

Hilco officials didn’t respond to requests for comment. james.covert@nypost.com