General
Betty Halbreich, World’s ‘Most Famous Personal Shopper,’ Dies at 96
She was a local New York secret before gaining wider renown as the dressing-room companion of rich, powerful women. A dark past lay beneath her savoir faire.
Betty Halbreich, considered by genuine and aspiring grandes dames to be fashion’s leading personal shopper, who made the search for the right clothing a higher kind of quest — one for dignity, standards and self-knowledge — died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 96.
Her daughter, Kathy Halbreich, said she died of cancer in a hospital.
Ms. Halbreich was revered by those in the know and anonymous to everyone else. It took expertise, and perhaps a bit of gumption, even just to find her. One would enter the imposing white marble building that the Bergdorf Goodman department store has occupied since the Jazz Age; stride past the crystal chandeliers of the lobby; navigate to a narrow, nondescript hallway on the third floor; and proceed to the end of it.
There lay Betty Halbreich’s Solutions. It was a little cream-colored office with a stunning view of the Plaza Hotel and the Pulitzer Fountain but also some characteristics of a diner. A board pasted with photographs of regulars included a picture of Lena Dunham; a plastic box on the desk containing an odd trinket, a gun made of chocolate, was a gift from Joan Rivers.
Ms. Halbreich dressed a combination of New York’s matrons and debutantes, as well as tycoons like Estée Lauder, big shots’ wives like the former first lady Betty Ford, politicians like Dianne Feinstein, and actresses like Lauren Bacall and Meryl Streep. She worked closely with the stylists of movies, including “Broadway Danny Rose” (1984) and “Sophie’s Choice” (1982), and television shows, including the original “Gossip Girl” and “Sex and the City,” for which a single episode could require spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on clothes.
In her 80s, Ms. Halbreich transformed from a local secret for the rich and famous into a national figure: She was “the breakout star” of the 2013 documentary “Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s,” as The New York Times wrote. The next year, her memoir, “I’ll Drink to That: A Life in Style, With a Twist,” was widely and positively reviewed.