Or possibly it was long enough ago that you were young enough to not catch it? The older woman pays for his apartment, leaves money on his table that Holly comments about ("Is it by the hour or by the night?") and starts to write him a check when he's trying to break it off with her, trying to convince him to stay on retainer. But it's all done with such understatedness.

Of course the movie is about style. In the party scene you hear about how she was taught to "imitate speaking English" and she is contrasted with the woman who is a model but hasn't learned any graces. Even the strip bar they go to looks classy; it's not dark with cheesy colored lights and bad music and guys yelling - there's even a woman sitting right behind them in the scene, so it looks like there being a stipper on the stage is very normalized. I'm pretty certain you can't find any strip clubs like that, now. It's like a foreign culture, and this was only a generation ago, really.