ABOVE: Watch Betty Halbreich in conversation with Liza Fromer on The Morning Show.
TORONTO — Betty Halbreich, who spent years dressing up clients of chic New York retailer Bergdorf Goodman, is giving the fashion industry a bit of a dressing-down.
“It’s hype,” she said during an interview that aired Wednesday on Global’s The Morning Show. “It’s to sell clothes. To get you to discard what you have and say, ‘Oh, I can’t wear that because they say I should be wearing this this season.'”
Halbreich insisted looking good is not about how much money you spend.
“You can go into a Target. I used to say years ago I’d walk you through a Target, you’d look like you came out of Bergdorf Goodman,” she said.
In her recently-published memoir I’ll Drink to That, Halbreich reflects on her career with the iconic retailer as well as her early life and difficult marriage.
A native of Chicago, she said she doesn’t feel like she ever truly became a New Yorker.
“I’ll probably never be able to go home after telling you this but I’ve always liked something outside of New York,” said Halbreich, who is nearly 87. “I am a New Yorker but it’s sort of a love-hate relationship.”
The job at Bergdorf Goodman came late in her life. “It was scary because I never thought I would get a job,” she recalled. “After I got that job I began to wonder what was I going to do with it? I don’t add. I don’t subtract. I don’t drive. I don’t use a cell phone, and I don’t use a computer … I had to reinvent myself.”
Her strength, Halbreich said, is being visual.
“I can see colour, I can see things, I can dress you in my head,” she explained. “If you have a huge store to walk through every day of your life you’ve got to figure out something and how to dress people or else you’d be the doorman.”
During her appearance on The Morning Show, Halbreich also reflected on the passing of her close friend Joan Rivers. She said it only recently set in that the comic is truly gone.
“She was the most giving. Extremely intelligent,” she remembered. “Devoured books. She would be a bookstore’s delight — one under each arm.
As with so much of her life, Halbreich’s recollections of Rivers include time spent inside Bergdorf Goodman.
“We were friends behind the dressing room door,” she said. “And you know what that means. That means the clothes come off and the real person comes out.”
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