Personal shopper and fashion consultant Betty Halbreich, 96, died on August 24. She started out working retail: “I paid my dues on the sales floor but I didn’t sell anything. I was terrible. I could sell the clothes, but I couldn’t write an order because I can’t add.” From 1976 through this year, Halbreich was personal shopper at Bergdorf Goodman, serving such varied clients as Babe Paley, Al Gore, Meryl Streep and Liza Minnelli. She was also a fashion consultant on several Woody Allen films, as well as Sex and the City and Gossip Girl. Halbreich wrote several books, including Secrets of a Fashion Therapist and I’ll Drink to That: A Life in Style, with a Twist; her No One Has Seen It All is due out next year. Halbreich reminisced that in the past, “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. You wouldn’t walk around in shorts or tight white pants.”
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