By Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Film Critic
May 2, 2013, 3:29 p.m.

If fashion is a religion, one of its sacred shrines is an emporium that takes up a whole city block on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, a store so venerated by devotees that a celebrated New Yorker cartoon had one matron confess to another, “I want my ashes scattered over Bergdorf’s.”

Still overseen by the descendants of the same family that began it in 1901, Bergdorf Goodman, to give the place its official name, is the kind of store both its shoppers and the designers whose clothes sell there view as next door to addictive.

The epitome of luxury and priced to match, Bergdorf’s has been called everything from a hymn to consumer capitalism to the store with the most discerning clientele in the world, the kind of place where a $6,000 pair of heels is so in demand the shoe salon can’t keep them in stock. More than all that, as portrayed in the sparkling documentary “Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s,” its story is an engaging one.

Though partly funded by one of the descendants of the store’s founder, director Matthew Miele has made a lively, clever, fast-moving film that isn’t overly reverential about its subject. It examines such matters as the store’s legendary personal shoppers and display windows so significant that Giorgio Armani claims when he comes to New York “the first thing I want to know is what’s in the window.”

Armani is far from the only big-name designer Miele counts among his more than 175 interviews. Karl Lagerfeld, shoe king Manolo Blahnik, Marc Jacobs, the twins Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen and Michelle Obama favorite Jason Wu add weight to Isaac Mizrahi’s statement that clothes that are not at Bergdorf’s are clothes without a future.

Given how many celebrities have made Bergdorf’s their home away from home, it’s not surprising that we hear stories about them. Like the time Elizabeth Taylor ordered custom-made mink earmuffs for her entire Christmas list. Or the day John Lennon and Yoko Ono ordered 70 fur coats for their Christmas giving, a splurge that would have cost them $2.5 million at today’s prices.

Andrew Goodman, who inherited the store from his father and engineered its rise to prominence, considers the people who shopped there to be clients, not customers. One of the store’s trademarks is its use of personal shoppers, a team of crack salespeople who can earn comfortable six-figure incomes helping the rich and famous decide what to buy.

Lest you think this is a job for sycophants, the film introduces the tart-tongued “honest to a fault” Betty Halbreich, who takes charge of your buying experience in the most no-nonsense way. “I don’t hate,” she says, dismissing rumors to that effect. “Dislike? Yes.”

Also explored are the roles played by the store’s fashion directors, the gatekeepers who decide which designers are ready for BG prime time. The by-now hugely successful Michael Kors, for example, was discovered by fashion director Dawn Mello, who spied him dressing a window right across the street from the Bergdorf block.

We see Mello’s successor, Linda Fargo, managing to be charming, approachable and decisive as she weighs whether young designer Ally Hilfiger, the daughter of the celebrated Tommy, is ready for the store. “It’s like a marriage,” Fargo says. “You don’t enter into it lightly.”

Though filmmaker Miele races all over the Bergdorf experience, the heart of the film, the narrative thread he returns to over and over, is the overwhelming amount of work put into the store’s signature moment, its Christmas windows.

Focusing on the 2011 windows, all created around a “Carnival of the Animals” theme, the film follows designer David Hoey as he visits artists’ showrooms and pulls all the elements together. Hoey’s idea for his work is to satisfy everyone, from children to sophisticates. “I want the windows to be perceived as hallucinations,” Hoey says, the ideal entry point for a store that is the center of so many fashion dreams.

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‘Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s’

MPAA rating: PG-13 for a brief sexual reference

Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes

Playing: At the ArcLight, Hollywood

Within 30 seconds in her airy, orchid-filled office three floors above Central Park, Betty Halbreich had zeroed in on one of my chief torments as a professional woman.

“I know why you have a problem with pants,” Halbreich said dryly, patting my hip.

Halbreich, an 85-year-old personal shopper at Bergdorf Goodman in New York, has dressed Joan Rivers, Meryl Streep and Candice Bergen, and helped costume designer Patricia Field adorn the women of “Sex and the City.” She’s one of the supporting characters in “Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s,” a new documentary, which opens May 3 in New York and Los Angeles, about the aspirational fashion emporium, and she is writing a memoir that HBO recently optioned for Lena Dunham to adapt.

Frank, warm and wickedly funny, Halbreich counsels powerful women at their most vulnerable moments — when they’re standing naked in the luxury department store’s mirrored rooms, trying to dress for a new career, new spouse, new body size.

For a recent hour, on a springlike Tuesday afternoon, she was dressing me.

Halbreich had pulled from the racks a soft, pastel green Theory leather jacket (marked down from $825 to $499); a flowing, navy, sequined top from Alice & Olivia ($330); a black-and-white, graphic print A-line Prada dress that was missing a price tag (“very expensive,” Halbreich said with a shrug). She tossed aside a printed green dress as “too sweet,” declared a blazer too short and dismissed my fears of horizontal stripes on a Missoni knit dress as outmoded thinking.

“Oh, dear God, come up into the new world,” Halbreich said. “First of all, this skirt moves. It covers whatever you’re trying to hide.”

When director Matthew Miele started making “Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s” in 2011, his primary interest was in the artists who designed the store’s intricate windows, which his family had come into New York City from New Jersey to see every holiday season when he was a child. As Miele, whose film was made to mark Bergdorf’s 111th anniversary last year, spent more time there, he began to identify other key characters, such as the store’s elegant vice president and principal tastemaker, Linda Fargo, and Halbreich, whose unpretentiousness has endeared her to clients and designers in a world that is often fawning.

“She was no-holds-barred candid; she came out with the funniest things,” Miele said.

Halbreich began her career in her 40s, when she was a mother of two with an unraveling marriage. She started at Bergdorf’s in 1976, running the shop’s Geoffrey Beene boutique, an era when women — even the rich ones — were changing the way they lived and the way they shopped.

“I’d see these women, they were needy,” said Halbreich, who was wearing a dark Marni blazer, sensible shoes and a whimsical wooden brooch she had bought for $2 in the Berkshires decades ago. “In my day, we didn’t work. What’s evolved is most women work … most women do something. These women are on a timetable.”

Halbreich has an uncanny ability to size up her clients’ moods in an instant and coax them through life’s difficult moments with a joke and a properly fitted dress.

“I love the baggage,” she said. “I love the stories. I have someone this afternoon, she’s the ugly stepmother of the child getting married. Which means I’m going to get a chip on the shoulder because she’s buying anything.”

Halbreich is not paid on commission by choice, and she loves to dig up bargains in a store that caters to the kind of people who can own their own islands. In a designer-obsessed industry, she is agnostic.

“I don’t pick from labels,” she said. “I pick visually. I pride myself on that.”

And she does it well. After three dresses in a row fit impeccably, Halbreich declared, “I’ve done very well on you. Maybe I’ll keep this job.”

She had brought several pairs of black pants into the fitting room for me to try as well but grabbed my arm, looked me in the eyes and said, “For the pants, go to J. Crew.”

–Rebecca Keegan

I recently saw the new documentary Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s, a behind-the-scenes peek at the iconic Manhattan institution Bergdorf Goodman and the people who work and shop there. Among the beautiful clothes, famous clientele, and glitzy window displays, one woman stole the show: Bergdorf’s septuagenarian personal shopper Betty Halbreich. She was terrifying and inspiring at the same time, two qualities that make a great mentor.

Watching Halbreich reign over racks of gorgeous designer clothes like a charming, acerbic spirit guide (albeit for outfits), I was instantly reminded of an equally sharp-tongued mentor from my grad school days, Nina Foch. She was an Oscar-nominated actress in the 1940s and 50s (Executive Suite, Spartacus) and she turned out to be an incredible teacher who inspired both abject fear and cult-like devotion in her students. She taught an acting class for writers, which, if you’re a “behind the scenes” person, is a frightening enough prospect. Nina, always with a gardenia pinned somewhere on her outfit, strolled in on the first day and had a few students in tears by the end of class. Several people dropped out after the first day. The rest of us clung to her every word, even when she was riffing on Dan Aykroyd in Saturday Night Live and calling us “ignorant sluts.” Everything that came out of her mouth was intended to make us better, not to make us feel horrible. The people who didn’t drop the class understood this, and we entered her classroom each week praying we wouldn’t be singled out, and walking away exhilarated and inspired if we were.

To judge from Halbreich’s scenes in Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s, she possesses that same kind of power – the ability to cut through the B.S., call out your faults, break you down, and build you back up, all within about four seconds. Not every mentor has to have this personality trait, but it just happens to be a really effective one. You can’t fake it though – some mentors are more nurturing and less aggressive, and that works too. People like Halbreich and Nina Foch don’t come around too often, which is maybe why they leave such a lasting impression. They’re not spinning some well-rehearsed self-improvement spiel. They’re the real deal.

When the interviewer in Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s asks Halbreich what she would be doing if she didn’t work at Bergdorf Goodman, her lightening-quick reply is, “Drinking.” When Nina Foch was laying into us for being a lazy, apathetic generation who said “like” and “anyways” and cared more about reality TV than making a contribution to the world, she’d peer straight into our souls (it really felt like she could pierce the souls of an entire classroom, I don’t know how she did it), and she would say, “If you want to be comfortable, go home and go to bed.” Most of us don’t want to sit back and be comfortable though. It’s good to be reminded of that every once in a while.

Girls creators Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner are turning Halbreich’s upcoming memoir All Dressed Up and Everywhere To Go into a show, and to judge by what I’ve seen of Halbreich, there should be a lot of hilarious but barbed dialogue flying around. I recently wrote about the difference between being assertive versus being a jerk, which is maybe why these two women – and their very unique mix of well-intentioned aggression – are intriguing. The article sparked some debate about what constitutes a strong, interesting woman, but I think the reason women like Nina Foch and Betty Halbreich evolve into mentors (as opposed to bullies) is that everything they say is intended to better the person they’re speaking to, not beat them to a pulp and leave them feeling horrible. It’s about being well-intentioned rather than mean-spirited. Good mentors might terrify you and keep you on your toes, but it’s always part of their plan to pick you back up, quickly.

–Dina Gachman

The fashion set has been buzzing with excitement over Matthew Miele’s Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s,a documentary showing the inner most secrets of the legendary department store in New York. The film, which is set to premiere May 3rd, gives the audience a sneak peek of “the history, inner workings and untold stories” of Bergdorf Goodman behind those magical windows, according to a press release. As if it wasn’t enough to see the trappings of fashion turned into modern art, we get cameos from Karl Lagerfeld,Oscar de la Renta, Vera Wang, Marc Jacobs, Diane von Furstenberg, Georgina Chapman, Christian Louboutin, Linda Fargo, Betty Halbreich, and window designer David Hoey.

Speaking of those magical windows … we have an exclusive clip just for you where Hoey shares his tips on creating a dream window. And that’s not all. After viewing, you can use all that you learned to build your dream window for a chance to win a $500 gift card to Bergdorf’s. Sounds like fun, yes? So check out the video and then build your own dream window here!

–Channing Hargrove

Matthew Miele’s documentary “Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s” comes out May 3rd, via eOne Films, and seems to be something of a reverential tribute to the titular Manhattan fashion. A glossy and glamorous celebration of fashion and shopping, the film features an interview line-up that includes Diane Von Furstenberg, Georgina Chapman, Karl Lagerfeld, Oscar De La Renta, Vera Wang, Marc Jacobs and Christian Louboutin.

Below you can check out an exclusive clip from the film, in which Bobbi Brown Cosmetics founder Bobbi Brown talks about her rise to inclusion in the extremely exclusive store.

To celebrate its 111th anniversary, Bergdorf Goodman will release the new documentary, Scatter My Ashes At Bergdorf on May 3.

The film explores the historic department store’s influence on fashion, and includes cameos from fashion giants like Michael Kors, Oscar de la Renta and Karl Lagerfeld. For more information about the film check out Bergdorf’s Facebook page.

In this exclusive video given to us, Bergdorf Goodman’s sassy personal shopper Betty Halbreich, talks about working for the store for years. Featured is Isaac Mizrahi, Candice Bergen, Bobbi Brown, Joan Rivers and Patricia Field.

–Adrienne A. Gadling & Danielle Kwateng

If you’ve ever dreamed of going behind the scenes of one of the world’s most iconic department stores (who hasn’t?!), Scatter My Ashes At Bergdorf’s is a must-see. The documentary offers a never-before-seen glimpse at the inner workings and untold stories behind Bergdorf Goodman’s renowned window displays.

In this eye-popping exclusive clip, shoephiles like Rachel Zoe pay tribute to one of our favorite departments in the store–Bergdorf’s legendary shoe salon.

In addition to Zoe, the film features interviews with Oscar de la Renta, Karl Lagerfeld, Christian Louboutin, Marc Jacobs, Ashley Olsen, Mary-Kate Olsen, Nicole Richie, and Diane Von Furstenberg, among others.

Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s debuts in New York on May 3, 2013. Head over to the film’s Facebook page for more information.

Any fashionista who has ever visited N.Y.C. knows that the amazing department store Bergdorf Goodman is must-visit landmark — up there with the Statue of Liberty!

And the store has inspired such loyalty in its high-wattage customers (from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis toMary-Kate and Ashley Olsen) that a book has been published — and an upcoming film has been produced — all about its fascinating history.

In an exclusive sneak peek video from Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s, we get a look at the store’s fashion director, Linda Fargo, who has become an iconic front-row presence at Fashion Week and who vets all the designers that come through the store.

In the clip above, stars like Rachel Zoe and Nicole Richie pay gushing tribute to Fargo as well as to the store, and remind us why shopping can be so much fun. Take a look, then be sure to check out all of the other huge fashion names who were interviewed for the documentary when it hits theaters May 3.

Tell us: Where’s your favorite place to shop? Are you excited to see the film?

–Alex Apatoff

by Jeff Labrecque

“Being able to shop at Bergdorf-Goodman is an aphrodisiac.” — celebrity stylist Robert Verdi

The one-of-a-kind mecca of materialism at the corner of Manhattan’s 5th Avenue and 58th Street is practically an erotic destination for society’s wealthiest and most stylish personalities. But for other mere mortals, the store’s magnificent window displays are the closest they’ll get to the fabulous designs inside — 1.5 million walk by and gawk each week.

Director Matthew Miele followed David Hoey, Bergdorf-Goodman’s senior director of visual presentation, and his team during their holiday window preparations in 2011 as part of his documentary about the store’s legendary mystique, Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s. “The windows are sort of an embodiment of the personality of the store, the fashion Id of the store, in a way,” says Hoey, who’s been conceiving and creating Bergdorf’s windows for nearly 17 years. “You have to think of three levels of scale. Windows have to look interesting from across the street. Then they have to look good from the sidewalk. But then there’s a whole other layer of interest, which is up close.”

Thanks to his elaborate and artistically thoughtful displays, Hoey is a revered pillar of the New York fashion scene. (Yes, that’s his name on the doc’s poster, above Marc Jacobs and even with Giorgio Armani.) “A good window dresser is really pretending that he’s doing many other professions: You’re doing fashion, you’re doing theater, advertising, and you’re a story-teller,” says Hoey. “On the professional spectrum, window dresser is somewhere between industrial engineer and cake decorator.”

During the course of the year, Hoey supervises the decoration of hundreds of store windows, with the famous holiday displays taking months to prepare. Crowds flock to 5th and 58th the day they’re unveiled, but Hoey isn’t able to bask in the success. “Believe it or not, in my case, I’m thinking about the next year immediately,” he says. “Once they’re revealed, we almost immediately begin the next set. We’re our own harshest critics.”

Click below to see an exclusive scene from Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf‘s that takes you behind the store’s holiday glass.

Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s, which also includes interviews with Karl Lagerfeld, Oscar De La Renta, Vera Wang, Marc Jacobs, Diane Von Furstenberg, Georgina Chapman, Christian Louboutin, Linda Fargo, and Betty Halbreich, will open in select theaters on May 3.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013, by Tiffany Yannetta

Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s will be released in New York theaters onMay 3rd, with a release throughout the country scheduled for the following weeks. If you’d rather not wait that long, we have an exclusive clip to share. In the video above—which is composed of footage not seen in the documentary—everyone from Karl Lagerfeld to Manolo Blahnik discuss how they got their start, what advice they have for young up-and-comers, and how truly great design can’t be taught.

Want to win tickets to the NYC premiere on the 29th, as well as a $500 gift card to spend at Bergdorf? Head here for the lowdown on the Instagram contest we’ll be running all week.

April 8, 2013 at 11:23am EDT, By Amy Odell

Matthew Miele’s film Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s is an inside look at the workings of one of the world’s best and fanciest department stores. Loads of famous fashion people make appearances in the movie, including the store’s influential personal shopper Betty Halbreich, designers like Diane Von Furstenberg and Karl Lagerfeld, celebrity designers like Nicole Richie, and one of the funniest women ever, Fashion Police host Joan Rivers. In this exclusive clip, Joan talks about why she adores Halbreich: “She’s right 90% of the time, and she’s smart, and she’s funny and she’s sharp, and she hates everybody — I love her so much.”

One of Manhattan’s most distinct fashion emporiums gets its close-up in Scatter My Ashes At Bergdorf’s, Matthew Miele’s documentary about the designers, buyers, window dressers and famous customers who make it a destination. Karl Lagerfeld, Oscar De La Renta, Diane Von Furstenberg, Christian Louboutin and Disconnect actor Marc Jacobs are among the fashion designers featured in this film, which has just unveiled a stylish new poster outfitted in the tasteful purple color — lilac, to be specific — of Bergdorf’s shopping bags.

Here’s an exclusive look at the poster, along with the trailer and a synopsis:
It’s the most mythic of all American emporiums – a one-of-a-kind Manhattan institution where over the last century, the view of fashion has been transformed into modern art.  But behind Bergdorf Goodman’s magical window displays lies a very real world where the rich and famous wield their power and eccentricity, where young and talented designers have their dreams granted and denied, and where money and ambition co-mingle with radical ideas of beauty and provocative style.  Now, for the first time, audiences get a chance to peek inside this world, as Matthew Miele’s Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s explores the history, inner workings and untold stories behind the store’s rise from a modest ladies’ tailor shop to a mirror of contemporary culture.

Betty is back. But this time, Bergdorf Goodman’s most famous and loved personal shopper is sharing the big screen with several of fashion’s most respected — namely, Diane von Furstenberg, Karl Lagerfeld, Christian Louboutin, and Linda Fargo — in an eye-opening look at Fifth Avenue’s most illustrious shopping destination. The cherry on top? R29 readers get the first peek here.

The upcoming feature film, Scatter My Ashes At Bergdorf’s — a statement that’s not at all macabre as it sounds — plays off the ultimate declaration of BG fandom from a classic New Yorker cartoon by Victoria Roberts, captioned “I want my ashes scattered over Bergdorf’s.” And as illustrated in the movie trailer, that kind of devotion is not just for anyone. With an enthralling glimpse at the history of the Goodmans, the Bergdorfs, the designers, and the jaw-dropping windows, Scatter My Ashes gives new appreciation of the legendary store and the magic that happens within its walls. Debuting May 3 in New York, and soon followed by other cities around the country, watch the entire trailer below, filled with familiar faces — maybe we’re biased, but Betty is the scene stealer — and perhaps a not-so-familiar story worthy of celebration.

by TYLER MCCALL

Every fashion-obsessed New Yorker knows the three “B”s: Barneys, Bendel’s, and Bergdorf’s.

It’s that last “B” that’s the focus of a new documentary, Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s. Director Matthew Miele tells the history of the iconic department store and offers up an inside look at what goes on behind-the-scenes today.

Movie-goers get to see the making of those awe-inspiring holiday windows and find outhow much a sales associate can make (no one would say on record, but it’s estimated at an amazing $400-$500 thousand a year!). Plus, there’s a lengthy bit about legendary (and hilarious) Bergdorf Goodman personal shopper Betty Halbreich (who is also the subject of Lena Dunham’s next HBO project).

Still, Bergdorf’s would just be a beautiful empty shell without the incredible designers stocked there, and there are plenty in the film sharing personal stories about the store and how it felt to have their designs at Bergdorf’s for the first time.

One of the designers featured is sound-byte machine Karl Lagerfeld, who stars in this exclusive outtake from the film. He doesn’t disappoint. (Does he ever?)

Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s will be released May 3, 2013 in New York City, with other cities to follow.