Betty Halbreich, who provided generations of customers with an unparalleled personal shopping experience at Bergdorf Goodman, died of natural causes in Manhattan on Saturday. She was 96 years old.
She was considered a fixture at Bergdorf Goodman, where her keen eye, impeccable taste, wit and forthright, candid manner charmed the many celebrities, well-heeled shoppers and colleagues she met regularly.A native of Chicago, Halbreich was also a best-selling author.
“Mom lived an inspiring life, much of it spent at her favorite place in the world, her desk at Bergdorf Goodman, where she would crack jokes in a room with a view and serve Bergdorf Goodman tea sandwiches to visitors,” her children, Kathy and John Halbreich, said in a joint statement Saturday. “From a young lawyer’s first case before the court to dressing someone for a fabulous gala, Mom took great pride in dressing women and helping them pursue their dreams. Despite all the glitz and glamour, she was unpretentious, a realist and a romantic. You didn’t have to be a celebrity or a billionaire to be in the circle of Betty’s care and advice. We will all miss her wisdom, her sometimes dry humor and her passion.”
“Betty was truly one of a kind. You never knew who you’d meet if you stopped by her office,” said Mallory Andrews, Bergdorf’s former senior vice president of marketing, promotions and public relations. “I remember meeting Walter Cronkite one December as he picked out his annual Christmas gift for his wife. Then we had Joan Rivers, Betty Buckley, Lena Dunham — the list goes on. Bergdorf’s just wouldn’t be the same without her.”
“Betty Halbreich shaped the history of Bergdorf Goodman, her second home for 48 years, in countless ways,” said Darcy Penick, president of Bergdorf Goodman. “Fearless and inquisitive, she not only changed the way her customers looked at clothing, but also how they saw themselves. She was larger than life and unique in every sense of the word, forever impacting the fabric of Bergdorf Goodman’s culture.”
In her book, I’ll Drink to That: A Life in Style, With a Twist, published a decade ago, Halbreich wrote relentlessly about the trials of her life: her fraying marriage, her nervous breakdowns and suicide attempts, the struggles of motherhood, her survival of polio and cancer — all of which, of course, revolved around fashion.
After recovering from a mental breakdown, she worked in designer showrooms on Seventh Avenue, including Geoffrey Beene. She joined Bergdorf’s as a sales associate in 1976. At her suggestion, the store created a personal shopping office for her. Bergdorf Goodman, part of the Neiman Marcus Group, continues to maintain one of the retail industry’s highest reputations for luxury and personal service.
Interviewed by WWD at the time of her book’s release, Halbreich said America has become too casual and reminisced about a more stylish time. “We used to dress well. That’s what’s different now. We’d go to El Morocco on a Saturday night and give the head waiter a huge tip to get a table. We wouldn’t even think about going out without dressing up. We’d go into, say, Bonuit Teller or Lord & Taylor and we’d dress up,” she said. “You’re not going to walk around in shorts or tight white pants. That’s my new obsession. I hate white pants. Have you noticed everyone walking around in tight white pants? Large, medium, small. It’s so gross. I can’t wait until winter when everyone puts on a coat and hides all this provocative stuff.”
Halbreich also wrote a bestselling autobiography, Secrets of a Fashion Therapist, which provided an insightful account of her extraordinary career and life. She gained a wider audience with the 2013 documentary, Scattering My Ashes at Bergdorf Goodman, which paid tribute to the luxury retailer. Her third book, Nobody Saw It, is scheduled to be published in April 2025, according to Bergdorf Goodman.
Halbreich never upsold her clients or favored any particular brand or designer. Instead, she instinctively assessed her customers and tried to pair them with the clothes she thought would suit them best. “I call them my patients. They open up to me like a therapist,” she once told WWD. “It’s very hard to explain what I do.”
During her long tenure at Bergdorf Goodman, Halbreich won praise from fashion designers, celebrities and loyal customers, including her first client, style icon Babe Paley, for her decisiveness and conscientiousness in her clothing choices. When Halbreich first applied to work at Bergdorf, management paired her with Paley to see if she could sell him. She showed Paley several dresses, and he stumbled over one. But she got the job for $200 a week. In an interview, she said Paley was “extraordinarily beautiful, with great dark hair with gray in it, so she could be beautiful and nice.”
Halbreich went on to work with some of the world’s most famous actors, including Meryl Streep, Lena Dunham, Liza Minnelli, Lauren Bacall, Susan Lucci and Jane Pauley.
“I’m the one who taught Candice Bergen to walk in high heels,” she once told WWD. The people she most wanted to work with were Paley and Farrah Fawcett. She thought deciding what people should wear was easier than deciding what to buy for yourself at the grocery store. “The only thing I know is if a dress fits someone, and how they’ll wear it. It’s a gift.”
She said Christmas shopping with Cronkite was a highlight: “He was color blind. He was the most loveable person. People on the first floor would turn their heads when they heard his voice, because it was so unique.”
Yet, with her Midwestern roots and values, she embraced people from all walks of life, as well as Hollywood and Broadway stars. Yet her collaborations with costume designer Patricia Field on the TV series Sex and the City, style consultant on Woody Allen’s films, and stage and film costume designer William Ivey Long, among others, helped define some of the entertainment world’s iconic fashion moments.
Halbreich hated email and relied on a landline rather than a cell phone. As WWD previously reported, early in her career she would often delegate sales to other coworkers so she wouldn’t have to ring up cashiers, a practice that resented her when she ran a Geoffrey Beene boutique upstairs from Bergdorf’s. “I was just standing there telling people how to dress,” Halbreich told WWD.
She continued to work there until recently and Bergdorf officials said she never officially left the retailer.
Halbreich is survived by his daughter, Kathy, and son, John, as well as grandchildren, Henry Koehling, Jillian Halbreich and Hannah Halbreich. Memorial details will be announced at a later date.
Bergdorf’s Linda Fargo, designers Michael Kors and Betty Halbreich.
Joe Russo
