Having spent nearly five decades at Bergdorf Goodman and soon to complete her third book, Betty Halbreich shows no intent of slowing down.
Photo by Ruven Afanador, 2014
"I often say this chair should be there so that I don't see what's coming down the hall. Many peek around and never come, but by the time they get from there to here, I've got it sort of figured out… terrible," the self-proclaimed Fashion Therapist said laughingly as we sipped our tea on this year’s cold Groundhog Day in New York City. Betty Halbreich embodies a time and place in America that few remain around to recount. New York City has seen innumerable faces come and go, dream chasers and stockbrokers alike; yet, since her relocation to the city in 1947, Betty has been a constant. She occupies a coveted office on the third floor of Bergdorf Goodman; located within the solutions department of the acclaimed retailer – which she has headed since its inception in 1976 – Betty arrives to work five days a week with the kind of grit and stamina that can be difficult to find in most twenty-five-year-olds. Upon entering her office, which offers remarkable views of both the Pulitzer Fountain and Central Park, one is met with a space that can be likened to a small gallery. Naturally, it is a room filled with artwork, photographs, and fashion books which she has procured as a result of the many close relationships she has developed over her years in the department. However, after having had the pleasure of several meetings with Betty, it quickly became apparent that no amount of excitement yielded from these extensive collections, or her scenic office view could surpass the overwhelming feeling of comfort she immediately provides upon first encounter. Charismatic yet collected, elegant yet grounded, and peppered with wit, Betty’s persona commands while maintaining congeniality.
Betty Halbreich in her Bergdorf Goodman office, a space she has occupied for over 45 years. Photo by Reece Goodson.
It goes without saying that you have an incredibly unique position here at Bergdorf Goodman; which aspects of your character would you attest to this nearly 5-decade long career?
I'm very eccentric, I like to be; I never wanted to be like everybody else. Even my mother said, when everybody wore blue shirts or a certain shoe, I always went completely in the other direction… completely.
I don't have a peer, I’ve never had one. I would look maybe sometimes at what others were wearing and say, "Gee, I should have, or would have, or could have, or would like to," but the only thing I've ever been secure in is my own closet; however, it's become so unimportant – I could come here in my bathing suit. Clothes are incidental in my life; intellectually, I've learned a lot. I don't get distracted. I am a listener, and I become completely absorbed in what I'm hearing. Thank you, Lord, it's an attribute.
The only thing that's been an effort for me are figures; I hate math. I hate anything to do with numbers, which frees me up to visually see more – that's the only thing I pride myself on.
Your entry into the workforce occurred later in life. After having already lived an experience marked by challenges and other significant moments, you seized an opportunity at a juncture where many would convince themselves that their time had come and gone. Do you feel that joining Bergdorf’s later in life as a more experienced woman gave you an advantage?
That’s a good question, because I would have to take myself out of the box and put myself in front of a box to explain it – when I came here, it was survival. In those days, we had a cash register. I knew I couldn't run the cash register – Ira Neimark, who was head of the company, said, "What are we going to do with her? Where are we going to put her?" I said, "I can dress people." At that time, there was a Geoffrey Beene boutique downstairs; I had worked for Geoffrey in the past, so I said, "Let me go in there, I'm familiar with it, but I won't ring up the sales." So, the first year or so that I worked here, I never rang up my sales.
They've never known basically what I do; you know, if everyone's going this way, I go that way, unbeknownst to myself. So, I stood down there in the Geoffrey Beene boutique for quite a while, and then, I said, "Let me start a personal shopping office." And I did, with the girl sitting right across from me in the beginning, sharing a desk; that's how it started. So, dressing people has always been very easy for me, where it isn't for a lot of people.
Betty consults with a client over the phone in the 1990s. Following her divorce from her husband of twenty years, Sonny Halbreich, her career at Bergdorf Goodman emerged as her lifeline. Photo sourced from the Daily Mail, 2014.
In your 2014 New York Times best-selling memoir, I’ll Drink to That, you consider yourself the “antidote to the intimidation of shopping” in reference to the many clients who are nervous when entering a store such as Bergdorf Goodman. Why do you believe yourself to be an alleviation of this intimidation, and why do people come back to you?
I think people come back to me because, I hope, the reason being, they feel free in my presence. They're not obligated to buy and then return something – and there is some sort of expertise that comes with being here for forty-some years? I've never tried to set myself up differently, but somehow or other, this office and this chair did set me up separately from a lot of things.
You know, many customers go in and shut the door while the attendant stands outside? That was never the way with me; they’ve always kind of accepted or wanted my input. I'm brutally honest; if I don't like something, even if they do, I know I'm right because I'm objective – that's the only word I can use for myself. I don't know any other way; I would be hit over the head as a child if I didn't tell the truth! So, I hope honesty has run the department, It's a huge part of me. I've never stuck anybody; I don't even have the feeling for it – I put myself in their shoes, their walk.
I'm very honest; [being salaried] I've never worked from a money perspective, so I have the freedom of the port that I don't have to do anything – I can say anything I want. It's a weird, sort of customer-me attitude – I'm more frightened than they are.
Your third book, which you've been developing over the past four years, currently awaits editing and publication. What can you tell us about it that differentiates it from your first two?
This book is built on loneliness; it’s built on age and daily living. It's really much more intimate than the other two books because I began writing it at a very awful time in my life where loneliness enveloped me. I’ve never been through anything quite as excruciating as that summer, the summer of the pandemic. The city that surrounded me didn't help, it became empty and lonely; everything changed in my life. Summers already have a dreadful feeling for me anyway; they incorporate loneliness because everybody where I live leaves the city – well, they left the city, but they left me standing with the doorman, literally.
So out of that came the impetus to take a pen and a legal pad and just write my thoughts down, and from that, I spewed – I mean, it just came out like nothing had ever done, and it still does. It's a habit, like brushing my teeth; I've already done it this morning. Even in the office, I always find time to write down a couple of pages. They're not going to be easy to transcribe; how do you transcribe feeling? It's tricky, that's going to be the problem. However, there are a lot of people like me. The one thing that I've never felt is that I am alone, that only I'm feeling these things – there are so many of me, men and women.
Betty on the sales floor in 2020 via Instagram.
Throughout your 47 years at Bergdorf Goodman, you’ve styled pop culture's most recognizable individuals such as Meryl Streep, Liza Minnelli, Joan Rivers, and far too many more to list. However, you’ve also helped countless everyday women of America build their closets and find pieces of clothing that speak to them. Are there more similarities between your renowned clientele and the average shopper than meets the eye?
Everybody's the same. Listen, everyone that takes their clothes off – I've always said this – you stand stark naked in there (Betty gestures to her office’s personal changing room), I mean, they're all the same! If they're not, there's something wrong.
There's nothing new; it's the same litany. They all have two legs, two arms, and one head – strip them off, and they're all the same. It just becomes so rote; I'd like to see something new – it's an old lady talking when I say there's nothing new, of course, there is – there are new experiences, I just don't face them as new experiences.
Do you ever sense that a project or client relation will develop into the sort of phenomenon that so many of your ventures have become?
I've never been terribly enamored with any of that. Frightened? Yes. That I can't service them? That's number one that I used to have – “Oh, my God, so-and-so's coming; I wonder what I should get for her?” How to produce it, there's a certain way of hanging things if I'm concerned. I'm very visual, that's the one thing I am, I like it that way – I'm a neatnik, so that would bother me more than the person really.
I’ve never been a woman who, if Clark Gable walked in, or Tyrone Power, that I’d go, oohhh. It doesn't matter who it is, I'll say to half of them, “Oh my God, where have you been? I haven't seen you in ages!” – it becomes very homelike here; it's sort of insular to begin with.
Betty photographed in Bergdorf Goodman during the summer of 2023 alongside actor Kim Cattrall (center) and costume designer Pat Field (left). Field is celebrated for her contributions to iconic projects such as Sex and the City, The Devil Wears Prada, and Emily in Paris.
For someone who has had as long and illustrious a career in this industry as you have had and having been a part of various highly acclaimed projects, including Sex and the City and Gossip Girl, I’m sure you’ve come to notice that there are certain traits, achievements or moments of yours that are frequently recalled by others, almost like clockwork. What is a more unrecognized aspect of yourself that you wish was more acknowledged?
I hope that people recognize that I have a heart and feelings, and I'm here really to help them. A large part of selling these clothes has to do with the reason people are buying them; it's a feel-good experience. They feel if they're buying something, they're going to walk out of here feeling better. I've also had people with deaths in the family that I've had to dress – that is one of the most difficult things to do – however, it does get them all into a healing process; I've watched it. You know, "I have to dress for my husband's funeral." – that's pretty maudlin. It's not that they walk out feeling complete, but it's a help; I'm a clothes therapist.
The videos that you regularly post to your Instagram from your awe-inspiring office have become something of a routine for me and the 33 thousand followers of yours, watching in anticipation of what thought or question we will be left with each time. What inspired you to join social media?
She did (Betty points to her 26-year-old assistant, Morgan Machiski). A lot of people have wanted me to – all of the girls that have worked here tried to get me into it. ("I told her it'd get the book out, and it did; it worked!" Morgan adds.)
To me, it's like having my picture taken, and I loathe that – it's something that's so personally visual to me that it's intimidating; I don't have that. I have the freedom of expression and speaking; I guess I like it one on one. When I did the first two books, I had to go out on a book tour and get up there and speak to a hundred women at a luncheon – I don't know how I did it, but I did it.
How do you select the thoughts that you share with your audience?
Are you kidding? Once in a while, I write down ‘you should say this and shouldn't say that’ then I forget to even look at the piece of paper. I'm very extemporaneous; everything has to come out naturally, otherwise, I'd be a nervous wreck – what I try to do is get you, get you in a net, and say things, then trap you.
Betty and Bernadette Morra, Editor-in-Chief of FASHION Magazine, host a Q&A and book signing session at Ben McNally Bookstore in Toronto for I’ll Drink to That in 2014.
After dedicating nearly five decades to Bergdorf Goodman and expressing no desire to stop anytime soon, could you elaborate on the source of your sustained passion and flair for your work?
You should have been here this past week to see how I was sustaining it – between the doctor and lying home in bed. Isn't anyone – and I don't care who you are – better off if you can crawl here, especially at my age, than sit home and look out of a window in bed? Aren't I distracted by speaking to you when I didn't feel so well this morning? Isn't there some sort of psychological thing attached to this?
Being here, I would call it a... "help me." That's right. It's not a love affair, but it's more than tolerating it. It is helping me to stay alive, or walk, or be able to speak to you. Am I going to have you interview me from the phone at home? I don't like phone interviews, you have to see a person's face.
Don't give in, at my age. I could lie there and wait for the doctor to call every day, I'm not ready for that. My mother was the same way – the day she closed her bookstore, went home, and sold the car; she was in her 80s, younger than I am, maybe 90. I don't know; she never told anybody the truth – but she was gone within the next year or so. That stays in my brain. Am I going to lie here and just wait for whomever comes and takes you? I'm not quite ready. You alone have to pull yourself up – nobody can help you.
Betty and I in her office, captured by Morgan Machiski.
My initial impression of Ms. Halbreich was one of immense admiration. I was captivated by the notion that one could dedicate so much of their life to something and still have more to give. However, as I've delved deeper into her world, it has become clear that one does not consciously relinquish themselves to what forms their legacy; instead, it is revealed to them, often unexpectedly.
What some might consider simply an occupation; a means of sustenance, for her, has evolved into something of much greater significance. In a time where countless individuals are fervently striving for self-actualization and the discovery of a fulfilling life pursuit, Betty Halbreich humbly stands as a paragon of what we all should strive to obtain, even a fraction of, in our lifetimes.
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