Betty Halbreich, who brought an unparalleled personal shopping experience to generations of clients at Bergdorf Goodman, died Saturday in Manhattan from natural causes. She was 96.
With her discerning eye, impeccable taste, along with her wit and plain-spoken no-nonsense manner, she charmed the many celebrity and typically affluent shoppers she met with regularly, and her colleagues as well, and was considered an institution at Bergdorf Goodman. A native of Chicago, Halbreich was also a best-selling author.
“Our mom led a compelling life, much of which was spent at her favorite place in the world, at her Bergdorf Goodman desk – her room with a view, tossing zingers while offering those BG tea sandwiches to whomever graced her office,” her children Kathy Halbreich and John Halbreich said in a joint statement Saturday. “From the young lawyer taking a case to court for the first time to decking someone out for an incredible gala evening, she was immensely proud to dress women and help them chase their dreams. Despite all of the glitz and glamour, she held no pretensions – she was both a realist and a romantic. You didn’t have to be famous or a billionaire to enter Betty’s orbit of care and advice. We will all miss her wisdom, sometimes caustic humor, and passion.”
“Betty was truly one of a kind. You never knew who you might see when you stopped by Betty’s office,” said Mallory Andrews, Bergdorf’s former senior vice president for marketing, sales promotion and public relations. “I remember one December seeing Walter Cronkite who was there to select his wife’s Christmas gift as he did every year. And then there were Joan Rivers, Betty Buckley, Lena Dunham and the list goes on. Bergdorf’s will not be the same without her.”
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“In countless ways Betty Halbreich shaped the history of Bergdorf Goodman, her home away from home for 48 years,” said Darcy Penick, president of Bergdorf Goodman. “Fearless and ever-curious, she not only changed the way her clients viewed clothes but also how they viewed themselves. She was larger than life, incomparable in every sense, and forever impacted the fabric of our culture at Bergdorf Goodman.”
In her book, “I’ll Drink to That: A Life in Style, With a Twist,” released ten years ago, Halbreich unsparingly wrote about her life’s challenges: a frayed marriage, a nervous breakdown and an attempted suicide, the struggles of motherhood, overcoming polio and then cancer. Of course, fashion is a thread that runs through it all.
After recovering from the breakdown, she worked in a series of designer showrooms on Seventh Avenue, including Geoffrey Beene. She joined Bergdorf’s as a sales associate in 1976. The store created a personal shopping office for her upon her suggestion. Bergdorf Goodman, which is part of the Neiman Marcus Group, continues to maintain one of the strongest reputations in the retail industry for lavish, high-touch service.
Interviewed by WWD at the time of the book launch, Halbreich suggested that America’s casualization had gone too far and she recalled more stylish eras. “We dressed — that’s what’s different. You went to El Morocco on Saturday night and tipped the head waiter heavily to get a table. You didn’t think about going out not dressed. When you went into a store — let’s say Bonwit Teller or Lord & Taylor — you got dressed up,” she said. “You wouldn’t walk around in shorts or tight white pants. That’s my new obsession. I hate white pants. Have you noticed everyone is walking around in tight white pants — large, medium, small? They are so awful. I just can’t wait until people put their coats back on in winter and hide all this provocativeness.”
Halbreich also wrote a best-selling memoir, “Secrets of a Fashion Therapist,” which offered an insightful look at her extraordinary career and life. She was introduced to an even wider audience through the 2013 documentary “Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf Goodman,” a tribute to the luxury retailer. Her third book, “No One Has Seen It All,” will be released in April 2025, according to Bergdorf’s.
Halbreich never would upsell a client or favor a certain label or designer. Instead, she instinctively sized up her clients to put together the outfit she felt would work best for them. ”Patients, I call them. They open up to me like a therapist,” she once told WWD. “It’s very difficult to describe what I do.”
During her long tenure at Bergdorf Goodman, Halbreich won the praise of fashion designers, celebrities, and loyal clients for her decisive and honest approach to getting dressed, beginning with her first client, style icon Babe Paley. When Halbreich was first applying to work at Bergdorf’s, management set her up with Paley as a test, to see if she could sell Paley. She showed Paley some gowns and she proceeded to trip over one. But she got the job for $200 a week. Paley, she said in an interview, was “extraordinarily beautiful with wonderful black hair with a white streak. So you can be beautiful and nice at the same time.”
Halbreich went on to work with some of the most famous names in the world including Meryl Streep, Lena Dunham, Liza Minnelli, Lauren Bacall, Susan Lucci, and Jane Pauley.
“I taught Candice Bergen to walk in heels,” she once told WWD. Paley and Farrah Fawcett were among those she liked working with best. She considered deciding what people should wear easier than deciding what to buy for herself at a grocery store. “The one thing I know is how to fit a dress, if it’s going to fit someone. It’s a gift.”
She said that Christmas shopping with Cronkite was a highlight. “He was color-blind. He was the dearest human being. People would hear his voice and turn around on the first floor because it was so unique.”
And yet, with her Midwestern roots and values, she embraced all walks of life, not just Hollywood and Broadway stars. Still, her collaborations with costume designers Patricia Field on the television series “Sex and the City,” as a style consultant on some Woody Allen films, and with stage and film costume designer William Ivey Long, among others, helped shape some iconic fashion moments in entertainment.
Halbreich was averse to e-mail and relied more on a landline than her cell phone. As previously reported in WWD, early on in her career she routinely handed off sales to other associates to avoid having to do the cash register. That was a practice that irked Geoffrey Beene, since she ran his boutique on Bergdorf’s second floor. “I just stood there and told people how to dress,” Halbreich told WWD.
She continued to work until recently and according to Bergdorf officials, she never officially retired from the retailer.
Aside from her daughter Kathy and her son John, Halbreich is survived by grandchildren Henry Kohring, Gillian Halbreich and Hannah Halbreich. Details on a memorial service will be revealed at a later date.
