“Subway Twister,” store window, 2006.
“Almost every guy I meet says,
‘It’s nice to meet you, but you have
cost me a fortune. My wife must
be your best customer.’”
If a simple trip to the Bergdorf shoe salon can induce an endorphin rush in most women, just imagine being able to shop the store after hours? What about having Bergdorf Goodman brought to you?
When certain customers come in, they get whatever they want. And some of them don’t even need to come in.
“There’s no price resistance,” Michael Bastian, menswear designer and former Bergdorf Goodman men’s fashion director, says. “When I first started working here, I would do reconnaissance work in Italy, going to designer showrooms and tailored clothing companies to find new labels. But I didn’t know if a five- or six-thousand-dollar sport coat would fly in the store. The head of my department quickly set me straight. ‘That six-thousand-dollar sport coat to them is like you or me going to a supermarket and buying a bag of Oreos,’ he said. ‘There’s no long, dragged-out mental process of “Can I afford that?”’”
Of course, the shopper who can have it all has also probably seen it all, and can therefore be difficult to impress. “There are these women who come in the store every single day,” jewelry designer Amedeo Scognamiglio of Faraone Mennella says. “All the time, we have to change what’s in our counter, because they stop by and want to know what’s new. Whatever we show them, they say, ‘Seen it,’ or ‘Own it … What else do you have?’”
Hard-to-please customers keep the staff on point—something that benefits everyone who shops at Bergdorf. After all, you don’t have to be an heiress or a mogul to enjoy looking at a finely tuned selection of rarefied goods gathered from all over the world, and every customer gets VIP treatment. There’s almost nothing Bergdorf Goodman won’t do for you.
“Subway Twister,” store window, 2006.
I remember we were having a pretty difficult season selling furs one year in the seventies. The phone rang on Christmas Eve at about four o’clock. It was Yoko Ono, asking me to come to her apartment. John Lennon wanted to buy some furs for her.
I said, “You know, it’s Christmas Eve. We’re closing early. I’m not sure I can arrange it.” But I made a few phone calls and Ira Neimark, the CEO at the time, told me to do whatever I had to do to make the sale. So we booked a car, got a couple of security guards, and pulled eighty-eight fur coats, packing them up in huge salesman sample boxes.
It was really very cold that night as we trekked up to the Dakota. We had to carry everything by hand up from the underground garage because all the valets were gone for the Christmas holiday. So we loaded everything into the service elevator and went to the back entrance of the Lennon apartment. On the door, there was big oval brass plaque engraved with the word “Utopia.” And I thought to myself, “Typical.”
We rang the bell. Yoko was very happy to see us. After all, she hadn’t bought furs in a few months, so she needed something new. “Come on in,” she said, “but take your shoes off first.” There must have been twenty-five sets of china in their enormous kitchen, and there was a ton of electronic music equipment.
We went in, and Yoko very excitedly started unpacking one of the boxes. She took out a Fendi fur, tried it on, and said, “Oh, I love it. It’s fabulous. But hold on, I want John to be a part of this.”
John came in and greeted us. He asked if we’d like something to drink, and suggested we make ourselves comfortable in the living room. Yoko took us down a long hall. There was very little furniture, but many of the rooms had these crystal and geode pyramids. Yoko was really into healing and quartz and all of that stuff.
There was a huge white grand piano in the living room. I remember it was really hot, because they had the heat cranked. Yoko left us there, still waiting for that drink.
This was before cell phones, so I couldn’t even call my wife to let her know what we were doing or what time I would be home on Christmas Eve. We sat in that room for a good two hours. And at one point, I looked over, and in the corner there was a sable coat balled up on the floor—it was a coat I had sold Yoko recently, just sitting there in a heap.
Yoko finally came back and said, “Jack, come with me. I have a surprise for you.”
We followed her back into the kitchen. John had disappeared, and all of the trunks were just as they were when we brought them in. Nothing was out, except for the one fur that Yoko had tried on in front of me. And I thought to myself, “Well, her surprise is going to be that she’s buying nothing but this one fur coat.” Which would have made me a little angry and disappointed, considering we’d come all this way on Christmas Eve.
She said, “Sit down. I’m going to open a bottle of wine.” Then she goes over to the first case, takes the lid off, and says, “Well, the jacket over there I’m buying because I loved it immediately, and I’m going to buy this one and I’m going to buy this one,” she said as she started pulling out coats from the trunks. “And John’s going to buy this one. And I’m giving this one to John’s sister. And I’m giving this one to my sister. And I’m going to take this one. And John’s going to wear this one.” It just went on and on.
And she went to the next trunk. More of the same. She bought almost seventy fur coats, and we were beginning to feel like Cheshire cats, grinning ear to ear.
John came in. “Did we do well?”
I said, “You did great. You didn’t buy everything, but you bought plenty.”
It was already 10:30 or 11:00 P.M. when we got back to the store. I called Ira, and we all went to sleep that night very, very content.
—Jack Cohen, former fur department buyer
When I worked at Bergdorf, one of the executives, Leonard Hankin, had a gorgeous office with a beautiful bar. It was basically a salon, a very chic room, with a low sofa and lots of decanters. Anyone who came in would be offered a cocktail.
I would sometimes get called up there to help when important clients came in. The headmistress of the floor would tell us what to do, and we would run around the store, fetching this or that.
Elizabeth Taylor would come shopping at Bergdorf, and they would take her to Leonard’s office. She wouldn’t try anything on. She would just sit there and giggle and say, “I’ll take that.”
One Christmas season, she came in, and I remember exactly what she was wearing, my favorite outfit, a black turtleneck and a zebra print pony skirt. This was around 1972 or ’73. She was very girl—friendly, bubbly, with a real laughter about her, very joyous. And she ordered black mink earmuffs made by Emeric Partos for a trip to Gstaad, Switzerland—enough to give everyone on her Christmas list a pair.
—Candy Pratts Price, creative director, Vogue.com
I have always been of the mind-set that, instead of buying three cheap pairs of shoes, you just pool all that money together and get one great pair, which is why I shopped the shoe salon at Bergdorf. I was there one day in the eighties, and in floats Diana Ross. And she’s got on a catsuit and a Blackglama mink coat.
I will never forget how glamorous she was in her catsuit and fur. It was such a simple outfit, but it was genius for shopping, because once you slip off the coat, you can try on anything you like without having to take off your clothes, which makes it less of an ordeal and more of a pleasure. And of course, the mink keeps you warm.
She clearly had her own salesperson. That was a lesson that I took away. You want to try to have a relationship with a salesperson so you won’t have to walk around and find every shoe you want by yourself. They will know what you like and whatever is new for the season that you don’t already have.
That, to me, is the height of chic shopping.
—Bevy Smith, social media socialite
When I worked at Bergdorf Goodman as copy chief, Gloria Swanson once came into the store. She was wearing a leopard hat and a leopard coat and she was, almost, like a leopard. She just had a catlike walk, and all the doormen and elevator men—at the time, there were still elevator men at Bergdorf Goodman—they were just aghast.
But Bergdorf has always had those women. They still have those women. Now though, they have personal shoppers or private rooms, and very often, the store goes to them. But Madonna, Mariah Carey, they all shop there. I’ve seen Beyoncé in the shoe department, trying on some of our shoes and some from the other designers.
—George Malkemus, chief executive officer, Manolo Blahnik
A Bergdorf Goodman advertisement, photographed by Horst, for Vogue, 1936.
One day, they put me in the Oscar de la Renta boutique, to watch over it. I wasn’t near that echelon, to be able to sell in there. So I was sitting at the desk and I’m on the phone. And I see this woman with a ski cap on. It was warm outside, so I thought, “Gosh, that’s an odd outfit.” Then I recognize her as she’s rounding the corner—it’s Aretha Franklin.
I was raised in Detroit, and when I was growing up, we would go to this Baptist church and we’d sit in the parking lot and listen to the music. And it was Reverend Franklin’s church, her father, and that was her singing.
She comes up to me and she says, “Is Oscar here?”
And I said, “No, but I would be glad to get him on the phone for you.” So I called the Oscar de la Renta showroom, and said, “I have Aretha Franklin here. She wants to talk to Oscar.” They put her right through and she and Oscar had a brief conversation. I don’t know what was said. It wasn’t my place.
—David Battane, manager, human resources
Emeric Partos was a man from Hungary, and he came to America to be a great fur designer. He originally worked for Maximilian Furs, which had a salon on Fifty-Seventh Street. And it was really where the crème de la crème went to have furs custom made. Somehow he got hooked up with Bergdorf Goodman, which in those years had a workroom on the top floor of the store. So the coats for the clients were custom made, and he was in charge of that workroom.
He was a master of fitting and dying fur in colors that had never been done before. He dyed skins. He would cut up little pieces of fur and he would dye them in his sink. And he was very famous for what was called intarsia. In other words, he would make a mink sweater for a lady and in the middle was a squirrel, but it was actually put into it like a mosaic. The squirrel was in a colorful relief.
He became world famous. He did a lot of furs for movies. He did amazing editorials for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar. And he was a very small man, temperamental, as most designers are.
For My Name Is Barbra, Barbra Streisand’s television debut, he made many of her costumes. She arrives at the beginning in a white horse-drawn carriage, pulls up to Bergdorf on the Plaza side by the fountain, and she gets out and she’s wearing this wild Somali leopard fur coat, slit up to her waist. And she keeps changing during her romp through the store. Once she’s in white ermine knickers, a white ermine riding jacket, and a top hat like from the circus, made out of white satin.
At the time, she was identified with secondhand clothes, from the song she sang, “Second Hand Rose.” So it was ironic that she was in Bergdorf Goodman. And she danced and sang through the halls, wearing fur almost in every scene.
She was quite young in those days, and she was just in the midst of [her Broadway show] Funny Girl, taking the day off from the musical to film her television special. The Goodmans had a dinner for her in their apartment on the night it aired.
Barbra was a client of mine for easily ten years. She loved fur. One night, I was in bed sleeping, and the phone rang. My wife answered it, then gave it to me. “Barbra’s on the line,” she said.
At that time I had a salesgirl named Barbara. I get to the phone and I say, “Why the hell are you calling me at 10:30 at night? Have you been drinking?” Because this particular person drank.
So Barbra says, “Who the hell do you think this is, Jack?” And she tells me. And then she says, “Can you come up to the apartment? I want to buy some furs.”
I told her I couldn’t come that night. The store was closed. “You might think I own Bergdorf Goodman, but I don’t. I don’t have the key. I can’t access the vault. I can’t shut off the alarm. But I can get there early tomorrow morning.” So the next morning, I went to her beautiful apartment on the Upper West Side and she selected some new furs.
—Jack Cohen, former fur department buyer
“All Things Chanel,” store window, 2005.
One of the quintessential stories of New York City in the nineties is Six Degrees of Separation, John Guare’s play. And I was asked to do the clothes. It’s about someone pretending to be a member of this upper-class WASP clique, breaking into that inner circle and getting to know everyone.
The lady of the house, Ouisa, was played by Stockard Channing. And of course, where would Ouisa have shopped but Bergdorf Goodman? So that’s where we went for the clothes.
Stockard is to the manor born, so her choice of clothes and how to accessorize is spot-on. I’d ask her questions and she’d tell me, “Well, maybe I’d wear the nude pumps with that,” or “Maybe black is better here because it makes it more afternoon.”
When Stockard went off to do her next project, everyone was quite nervous because the next actress to play Ouisa was not, shall we just say, originally from Park Avenue. The playwright himself called me up and said, “William, before I sign off on this, do you think she can play a blue blood?”
I said, “Well, John, she’s an actress.”
He said, “No, but you have to have that innate sense.”
I said, “John, I’m taking her to Bergdorf Goodman.” And that was enough to calm everyone down. She got the job and she was excellent.
When I took her shopping, though, oh my god, was it rough. I think Betty Halbreich at Bergdorf, who always helped me, really earned her stripes that day.
—William Ivey Long, costume designer
I went to high school in the fifties. In our senior year, we were given jobs: one week we would work, and the next we would go to school. My assignment was to work at Bergdorf Goodman.
After I graduated, the buyer for the stationery department approached me and said, “I’d like you to work in my department. I would like to train you.” I was a little over eighteen when I started working full time.
The stationery department was located at the Fifty-Eighth Street door, on the right side of the rotunda. We handled Christmas cards for celebrities, wedding invitations, birth announcements, engagement announcements, at-home cards—“Mr. and Mrs. Jones will be at home at a certain date,” or “We have taken up residence at …” We did stationery for people’s country homes. We engraved personal items, canasta cards, anything that involved printing.
A couple of times, Cary Grant came in. He would be looking about, not really buying anything. Tony Randall came in several times, and he did purchase stationery. Peter Lawford bought a little something for his fiancée. He was engaged, at the time, to one of the Kennedy sisters.
One day, we were all at the counter discussing a new paper that had just come in. We looked up, and there she was: Grace Kelly. She was all alone. I don’t know if she had anybody waiting for her outside, but we didn’t see any secretary or family or friends.
We all knew about her engagement to Prince Rainier, of course. It was in all the papers and the wedding date was set. We were just amazed because we didn’t know she was coming. We thought if she was considering Bergdorf, someone would have notified us prior. But she just walked right in, like anyone off the street.
She was absolutely beautiful.
We all greeted her naturally. “Miss Kelly, good afternoon. Please sit down. It’s a pleasure to have you here.” My boss shook hands with her. She said she was interested in wedding invitations. We showed her all the different books. We all chimed in from time to time, assisting her with her questions, explaining about the options, comparing one invitation to another, things like that.
She ordered the invitations that very day—my boss was extremely pleased with that. I think she was leaving town, so any adjustments were handled by mail or phone, but she had mostly picked everything out at that point. We had her at the counter for, I would say, a good two hours, and she was as charming as charming could be.
—Marion DeMartini, former employee
When Jacqueline Kennedy was preparing for her husband’s inauguration, she had just had a baby. In a typical husband-and-wife scenario, the president-elect assumed his wife was very busy with the children, so he thought he would expedite who would design her inaugural gown.
He asked his good pal Oleg Cassini if Oleg could come up with some ideas. But unbeknownst to President Kennedy, Mrs. Kennedy had already conferred with Ethel Frankau, the fashion director at Bergdorf. And together, they, along with the legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland, had come up with a beautiful design.
So Mrs. Kennedy was in a little bit of a bind. She didn’t want to put her husband in an embarrassing situation, of course, but she also knew that she had a commitment with Bergdorf Goodman. It was a very delicate situation, and she knew that Ethel Frankau would not be happy if she backed out of their arrangement.
So there were many machinations and in the end, she very diplomatically decided that Oleg Cassini would do the coat and dress she wore to the actual inauguration—wool melton with a fur trim collar—and Bergdorf Goodman would indeed do the most important dress that she would probably ever wear for the Inaugural Ball.
It was a beautiful white satin dress with a purity to it, very simple, with a white coat. The lines were perfect, and of course, it became one of the most famous garments in the world.
I learned all of this from Ethel Frankau’s great-niece, Edla Cusick, who is a good friend, and who has all the letters from Mrs. Kennedy to Ms. Frankau. They were very charming, and they told the whole history of how it happened, down to the detail of President Kennedy coming into her hospital room after she had given birth to John Jr., saying basically, “I’ve just taken care of something for you,” and she thought, “Oh, dear. You didn’t really take of it. Now I have a fire to put out.”
You could just tell from the letters she was inspired by and in awe of Ethel Frankau. She listened to her and also to Diana Vreeland, who was a great mentor as well. She recognized that as first lady, she had a very important role, and she took it very seriously and depended on Bergdorf Goodman to help her establish her image.
—Wendy Goodman, design editor, New York Magazine
Sketches by Larson of Jacqueline Kennedy’s Inaugural Ball gown designed by Bergdorf Goodman fashion director Ethel Frankau.
Lyndon B. Johnson with President and Mrs. Kennedy at the ball, January 1961.
Mrs. Kennedy—well, she was Mrs. Onassis by then—would walk down Fifth Avenue from her apartment to come here. She would wear an old, beat-up raincoat so that no one would recognize her on the street. But she still couldn’t eat at the restaurant. We’d have to serve her in the fitting room, so she wouldn’t be bothered. And we would all be thinking, “Why would anybody want to be her?” What kind of a life was that? But she was so nice and she shopped a lot here.
—Dawn Mello, former president
There was another story where Jackie O. left the store one day with a package that she bought, and there was a security tag left on the dress. She went to the door. The alarm went off. Luckily, Pat Salvaggione, the famous Bergdorf doorman, was there and he took care of it. He told her, “If we don’t take it off, it’ll keep opening garage doors on your way home.”
She appreciated his sense of humor, and was very appreciative of people who took care of her.
—Ira Neimark, former chief executive officer
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis came in not long after I started, and they asked me to show her something. I was so frightened and so nervous and so really new that I got off at the wrong floor. I walked her out of the elevator, and she spoke very softly, in a whisper, “Oh, dear. This is not the second floor.” I was so embarrassed. You know these very famous people, it can be almost scary to help them.
—Carole Wasserman, sales associate
“Comparative Philosophy: Karl Lagerfeld versus Coco Chanel,” store window, 2005.
I was asked to do a scene in The Muppets Take Manhattan. We filmed it in Bergdorf. They opened up the store on a Sunday, and I was with Miss Piggy. In the movie, we were working there. I was a little upset, though, because that swine stole the show from me.
Under the counter, Jim Henson was working Miss Piggy with the hand and all that, and she was so lifelike and so funny that in between takes, I would still talk to her. You know how stupid that is? I would say, “Oh, that was good, you want to try it again?” And then I realized, “I’m talking to a rubber pig head.”
But it was great. And then we got fired from Bergdorf at the end of the scene. And rightfully so, because we were throwing powder on each other.
The other thing that hurt was, I had one costume. Miss Piggy had three. So they would change her in between takes. But I had to pat myself down a lot to get all the powder off. But it was so much fun working at Bergdorf.
I haven’t had the pleasure of working with Miss Piggy again. But I think she’s looking amazing. She looks exactly the same! I want to find out who her surgeon is.
—Joan Rivers, comedian
When I first started working at Bergdorf, two women came in together in very masculine clothes. It was winter, and we had a little boutique inside the fur salon, and they disappeared into where we kept the men’s furs.
I watched for a second, and this woman kept trying on the men’s coats, but she was clearly a woman, in pants and an overcoat and a slouchy hat.
I walked up to her and said, “Can I help you?”
And she said, “Yes, I want this coat. What do you think? Does it fit me?”
I looked very carefully at her. She was quite wrinkled. I’m usually very good at spotting celebrities—I can spot them a mile away—but she did not look familiar.
After she bought the coat and left, one of my cohorts came up and said, “Do you know who that was? Do you know who just bought a coat from you?”
And I said, “I have no clue.”
“That was Greta Garbo.”
—Jack Cohen, former fur department buyer
I’ve seen them all: Patrick Swayze, John Travolta, Brad Pitt came in with Gwyneth Paltrow when they were dating. Another day, I was standing in the men’s department. They had a big table and I was leaning on it, resting my elbows, with my chin on my hands, which you are really not supposed to do. And this, what’s his name? The famous singer from New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen, suddenly appears and he puts his elbows down on the table and looks into my eyes and goes, “Could you please tell me where to go to find socks.” Or something like that. I got a big kick out of him.
When John F. Kennedy Jr.—John-John—was young, he would come into the store wearing roller skates with his backpack on. He must have been in high school. And he would just roll through, looking at everything, taking it all in.
—Carole Wasserman, sales associate
I’ve worked on a lot of films and television shows through the years, since I started at Bergdorf: Arthur; Annie Hall; Eat, Pray, Love; Little Fockers; Sex and the City; 30 Rock; Gossip Girl; Black Swan.
I did some of the earlier films for Woody Allen, including Manhattan. I remember doing Mia Farrow for one film. We were putting her in a little dress that was $125 at the time. While I was dressing her in the fitting room, she said to me, “Do you know how many meals this would buy for the children in Biafra?”
Raging Bull, that was a very difficult movie to make, but I only know from dressing the women. A very creative costume designer who’s since passed away, John Boxer, did that movie. It was so much fun working with him. In those days, we could run around the store, day and night, and we could go into stockrooms. We picked through boxes and he’d find pieces of clothing that you’d never think he’d use.
That’s when he put a snood back out there—it is a crocheted piece, almost a bag, that you attach to the back of your head, but you have to have a lot of hair to stick into it. It became such a sensation after Cathy Moriarty wore one in Raging Bull. People hadn’t seen a snood since the thirties and forties.
Patricia Field is another incredible costume designer. I started with her way back with the first Sex and the City. Pat doesn’t say anything. She picks. If you ever see us work together, we walk the floor and she’ll glean out something and just keep layering, until it’s about to burst. But it works. Her costumes are over the top, but that is what she’s known for.
Katharine Hepburn used to sit outside my fitting room in her later years. She was a beautiful woman. Audrey Hepburn came in too. I taught Candice Bergen to walk in high heels right here. She came in to see me with Ali MacGraw once. They were friends; they shopped together. Christie Brinkley came in and wanted me to find her a dress to wear to the Academy Awards.
In those days, everybody was walking around with a cigarette, if you can believe it. They had canister ashtrays for cigarettes around the store. When I go back and think about it, it’s almost impossible to believe. But we all smoked—can you imagine what the clothes must have smelled like? And what about the damages? The burn marks? Who knows?
Probably the only person I was ever in awe of was President Ford. He was as good as it gets. They called ahead. They had an emergency. They were going to a huge party and Mrs. Ford needed a dress for that evening. Little did I realize, the president was coming as well.
He sat right over there in that chair. She was in the dressing room. I would go back and forth. She would come out and parade the dresses in front of him. They were so crazy about each other. They could’ve been any couple from anywhere in the United States. You never in your life would have dreamed this man held the office he did. And she was lovely. Really tiny, kind of frail, pretty. They sat here while I got the dress altered. Then she left, but he waited for the dress, with Secret Service men outside.
The dress comes down. He picks it up, and I said, “You can’t carry it that way.”
He turns to the Secret Service men and says, “Look at her. She’s going to teach me something.”
He threw it over his arm, and I said, “If you crush this, I won’t be there to press it again.” I heard from them when they moved out to California. We corresponded.
—Betty Halbreich, personal shopper
Bergdorf Goodman’s advertisement for Akris, the New York Times, spring 2011.
Balmain gown, spring 1963, original sketch rendered by Bergdorf Goodman.
Mrs. Brooke Astor was really quite elderly and still coming in. I’d see her on the third floor and she would be looking at the clothes from all the young designers. She wanted to know what was going on, so she would be looking at Marc Jacobs. I couldn’t believe it. I mean she was never going to buy any of it. Could you see Mrs. Astor in the latest from Marc Jacobs? But she still wanted to stay current, even then.
—Dawn Mello, former president
The last customer that dressed to come to the store was Brooke Astor. I met her when I was still selling here. I had read in the newspaper that she’d fallen and she’d hurt her hip. She came in with a cane, but still fully dressed with the gloves, the hat, and the whole thing, and said, “Excuse me, but is Serge here?” Serge was her salesman.
I said, “Mrs. Astor, if you would like to wait here, I can go and find him.” So she sat down and I went to find Serge. He was just finishing up with a customer, so I went back and sat in the chair next to her to keep her company until Serge arrived. “How are you feeling?” I asked. “I’ve heard you weren’t well … ?”
“Oh, I’m much better,” she said. She was very open and communicative.
In the next shop over, a woman was having her dress shortened. A fitter was on her knees, pinning the skirt, and I see the customer look over, and she spots Brooke Astor. This woman dashes over—I mean dashes—leaving the fitter on her knees holding the pins—and she grabs Mrs. Astor’s hand.
“Mrs. Astor, it’s so nice to see you,” she says.
Mrs. Astor was a little taken aback. She said, “I’m fine.”
The woman then understood what she had done and quietly went back to her fitting. Then Mrs. Astor turned to me and said, “Who is that woman, and how does she know my name?”
That, apparently, was just classic Brooke Astor. Because everyone knew who she was. She knew how famous she had become, and she really dressed for the people. She knew her role. So she was making a joke. But I didn’t get it at the time.
—David Battane, manager, human resources
I happen to live three blocks from Bergdorf, so I pass through the store all the time. One day, a personal shopper stopped me and said, “Roberto, please, I need your help. Get earrings and a lot of bracelets for a tall beautiful blonde.”
So I go to our jewelry counter and bring some things upstairs. I open the door of this room, and I see this gorgeous half-naked woman. It was Katherine Heigl. I was so stunned I just blurted out, “Wow, you’re beautiful.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
She was pretty funny. She looked me over and said, “Yeah, well, you’re hot too,” which made me laugh.
Amedeo Scognamiglio, my partner, and I like to say we play Barbie with our clients. We like to play dress up. So Katherine and I played dress up together, and I put her in all sorts of things. And the next week, I turned on David Letterman and there she was, wearing our cuffs and earrings.
—Roberto Faraone Mennella, jewelry designer
A few years ago, we kept getting this strange request for the “Oprah earrings.” And we didn’t know what people were talking about. We thought maybe it had something to do with an oval shape, something that looked like the letter O. But it started to be very strange, because in every city in America we visited, somebody would ask us for the Oprah earrings.
Finally, we said, “What is going on here?”
And someone told us, “I think Oprah wears a pair of your earrings all the time on her show.”
But we didn’t know for sure. We had never met her, and she had never called our showroom, our publicist, anything. So we were just embarrassed, more than anything. When people asked if those were our earrings, we wouldn’t say yes, we wouldn’t say no.
Eventually, someone sent us to her website, to watch her most recent show. Much to our surprise and happiness, she was really wearing our trademark earrings, in silver. But we still had no idea where she had gotten them. So we asked one of our friends at Bergdorf, one of the personal shoppers. And she said, “Oh, of course those are yours. Oprah’s been buying your jewelry for years.”
—Amedeo Scognamiglio, jewelry designer
Lanvin gown, 1966, original sketch rendered by Bergdorf Goodman.
Bergdorf Goodman’s advertisement for Lanvin, the New York Times, spring 2011.
Some of the celebrities are just a little too … overprivileged when they come in here to shop. I’ve had them take clothes off and kick them across the floor, then wait for me to pick them up.
I can’t name names, but there was a diva here once, a true diva. She was a singer and an actress—young, gorgeous, very famous. And she wanted everybody in the store to know who she was and that her presence was here.
She requested in advance that I have some peignoirs and lingerie in the dressing room for her to wear in between changing clothes. The little number she chose to put on was very flimsy. And all of a sudden, she decides she needs to see something on the third floor. I said, “Well, I’ll wait. I’ll wait for you to get dressed.”
And she said, “No, no. I want to go now.” And so off we went, with her in her little negligee and high heels, parading around the store for everyone to see.”
—Elaine Mack, personal shopper
When I was first asked to be in Bergdorf, I told them, “It’s my dream to be here, but I want to have a trunk show.” Now, I didn’t really know what a trunk show was at the time. I just remember reading Bill Blass did all these trunk shows, and Oscar [de la Renta] did trunk shows. So I had to have a trunk show too.
Women were just casually throwing the clothes all along the floor. We had thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of samples, and we’d sit there and I’d say, “No, let’s get the tank top,” or “I’d go with the turtleneck.”
At the time, it seemed to be a trend that women would wear pantyhose without any panties. I was kind of shocked that they would come out of the fitting room bare-bottomed. You know, now I realize maybe they thought I was a rock star and this was all acceptable.
New York women, especially Bergdorf women, are very forthcoming. They tell you everything. Sometimes too much.
—Michael Kors, designer
When my So80s book came out, Bergdorf wanted to throw a party. But I said, “It’s got to be a big party. Like a party from the eighties. And I want it on the main floor.” Which they never do, but they made an exception for me. People were dancing. A couple of people were smoking things they shouldn’t have been smoking. And I do remember, there were two people actually … making love, for want of a better word, behind the counters.
Somebody said, “This is a first. Even for us.”
I consider that party a success.
—Patrick McMullan, photographer
One of our most exciting events was for a gentleman client from Phoenix who wanted to throw a very special fiftieth birthday party for his wife—and this was her favorite store. So they flew in just for the day. It was a total surprise. We had a dinner party for the family set up here at the restaurant, for about twenty people, so we prepared one long table. We wanted to keep it cozy, so we brought in some trees and things to make it seem like they weren’t in a big empty room.
After the dinner, which was wonderful, the husband said, “Darling, happy fiftieth birthday. The store is yours tonight.” We had arranged for the store to be open just for her. Of course, she and the daughters went crazy. Furs, jewelry, anything they wanted, they could have. And for the gentlemen, we set up a cigar and cognac lounge.
Throughout the evening, we were serving little nibbles and champagne. They could go anywhere they wanted within the store—which took a little anticipating and arranging, to prepare for whatever they wanted to do next. But we also had a little salon set up for them in Personal Shopping so they had someplace to go back to and regroup.
That was the probably the most extravagant event we ever handled.
—Michael Perricone, director, BG Restaurants
For many years, All My Children was shot here in New York—basically, my whole adult life. Betty Halbreich of Bergdorf Goodman began to work with us very early on. Our costume designer was a friend of hers, and they would pull some of the most beautiful clothes in the store, and therefore on the planet, for Erica Kane, the character I played.
I’m sure the producers provided a budget that allowed for Erica to be dressed from Bergdorf. I just always felt so lucky that I was the actress who got to play her and that I could go to work every day and wear all these gorgeous clothes.
Later, I would come in, and I would run into Betty because she’s so hands-on and all over that store. Betty just knew what was right for me. I’ve found her to be honest, but that’s what I like. I don’t want a yes-man around me all the time. You can’t learn anything that way.
—Susan Lucci, actress
“Gothic Splendor,” store window, 2006.
One day, a bag lady came into the fur department. She kept looking at this particular fur, which was displayed in the center of the salon. The coat was a Russian sable—extremely expensive by today’s standards, probably a quarter-million dollars for the time. She kept touching the coat—and wanting to touch it.
My grandfather [Andrew Goodman] said politely to her, “Excuse me, ma’am, can I help you?” You know, he was trying to kind of usher her out, but not forcibly, just talking with her.
She said, “I really love this fur. I really want to buy it.”
And he said, “Well, that … that would be nice.”
She said, “How much is it?”
He said, “Well, it’s very expensive.”
And she put one bag down and she started pulling cash out of another and bought that sable coat.
Who was she? I don’t know. My grandfather said that that was the day he realized how important it was to always be nice, to always be courteous, because you never know what sort of bag might be full of money.
—Andrew Malloy, grandson of Andrew Goodman
During my time at the men’s store, one of the best customers we had was a Middle Eastern prince who would come to town a few times a year, at the beginning of the season. And he had his salesperson that he trusted and liked, and she would pull together pretty much half the store and would go to his hotel.
It was fun for me because she would pull me in and say, “Okay, what’s new, what’s great, help me put some looks together and really personalize it for him.” We knew his size, we knew what he liked, we knew what he bought last season, so we could help him build on that.
There were a lot of guys who were like that—celebrities, politicians, men in the financial world. It would be nothing for a guy to come in and drop $100,000 to just take care of everything all at once. That’s kind of the beauty of how men shop. They’re extremely loyal once they find a place that makes them happy.
—Michael Bastian, designer
I became very friendly with a lady from Houston. Her husband was a well-known doctor down there. She would come to New York every few months and she would buy fur like you never saw in your life. She was a very large woman, so she bought a lot of capes and ponchos and very big coats. And she would purchase the coats, but she would never allow us to ship them to Houston. We had to keep them here in storage in the basement. She didn’t want her husband to know that she was spending this extraordinary amount of money.
Every month or two, she would fly up to New York, notifying me in advance that she was coming. And I had to bring all her furs out of storage. There must have been seven racks full of the most amazing pieces you ever saw. She would just stand there in front of the mirror, trying them all on, visiting. To this day, I believe that they’re all still downstairs in a vault.
—Jack Cohen, former fur department buyer
There was a story in my family that when World War II broke out, my mother went to Bergdorf and just charged and charged and charged because she figured New York would be bombed and it would wipe out the billing department. And then nothing happened to New York—thank god.
But my father said my mother would run and stand in front of Bergdorf at night, holding big spotlights, hoping enemy planes would fly over.
—Joan Rivers, comedian