Always Pack a Party Dress: And Other Lessons Learned From a (Half) Life in Fashion

by Amanda Brooks

  STYLE INFLUENCE

  MY MOTHER

  I HAVE ALWAYS chosen different style icons for different times or aspects of my life—high-fashion ones, casual ones, tomboy ones, uber feminine ones, glamorous ones, subtle ones—but the one style icon who seems to serve me most consistently and most comprehensively is my mother. I’ve spoken a lot in the past about my love of the iconic American sportswear—the shift dress, the Bill Blass suit, the perfectly pressed shorts, the striped shirts—my mom wore in Palm Beach in the sixties and the high fashions like Alaïa, Carolyne Roehm, and Vicky Tiel she wore in the eighties. But at this point in my life I am most intrigued by what my mom wears now in her sixties. First of all, I look a lot like my mom—both in silhouette and in facial features—so her path from her early forties to where she is now is informative and gives me an idea of where I am headed. But beyond that, I can relate to how she evolved toward a place where she spends less time and money on her clothes, and I look at her and aspire to be half as chic as she is even though her life is so much more dynamic than thinking about what to wear all the time. When we are in the Adirondacks every August, the vast majority of what my mom wears has been hanging in her closet for twenty years. There are the basics—the flannel plaid shirts, the hiking boots, the waterproof Tevas (which have finally come back into fashion!), the skinny corduroys, the cardigans, the rain jackets, and her signature “crusher” fishing hat adorned with fishing license pins. Then there are the fashion pieces—a red suede fringed jacket, a red lizard western belt from Billy Martin’s (remember that store on Madison Ave?), and a dramatic vintage red paisley shawl. Yes, she loves red. And then each summer she’ll add a half dozen new pieces—a J.Crew embroidered tunic, a new pair of jeans, striped loafer-shaped espadrilles among them that all work seamlessly with what she already has. Although my mom’s look is the culmination of decades of trial and error, of collecting clothes, of evolving her lifestyle and adapting her style to suit her age, the effect appears confident, graceful, and effortless. What more could I want for myself?

  Wearing my favorite batik shirt and JanSport backpack, and carrying my Ray-Ban aviators at age fifteen in the Adirondacks.

  STYLE INFLUENCE

  MY TEENAGE YEARS: BOARDING SCHOOL, THE ADIRONDACKS, THE GRATEFUL DEAD, AND J.CREW

  PATAGONIA jackets, long floral skirts, tweed jackets, Adidas Stan Smith sneakers, batik-print cotton shirts, blue blazers, Mexican hippie bracelets, fisherman’s sweaters—these are all the things I thought I’d leave far behind once I left boarding school. When I was at Deerfield, my style was influenced by my preppy friends, my obsession with J.Crew, my love of the Grateful Dead, and the sporty outdoors hiking look I wore during my summers in the Adirondacks. Towards the end of college, I swore off the boho preppy look for good. But over the years, fashion has led me back to those days. Proenza Schouler made chunky-knit sweaters and quilted jackets cool again, Isabel Marant reintroduced the Indian-inspired romantic cotton florals, Phoebe Philo and Marc Jacobs resurrected Stan Smiths, Tory Burch revived the Mexican beach hippie look, and J.Crew gave prep school chic a much-needed boost. This new influx of enthusiasm for a look I know all too well has inspired me to embrace my own history and wear those things again with renewed enthusiasm.

  Clockwise from top left: At Deerfield Academy, 1989. Wearing Patagonias in the Adirondacks, 1995. My mom’s best friend, Mimi, in the Adirondacks, 1980. Mom’s Teva’s become relevant again, 2014. My stepdad, Will, at Pomfret, 1954. Mom’s preppy accessories, 2012.

  Clockwise from top left: My adult Adirondack style, 2010, photographed by Claibourne Swanson Frank. Jenna Lyons and her brother Ben in classic tomboy tailoring. My sister Kimberly and me at Deerfield, 1999. In the Adirondacks in a Proenza Schouler T-shirt, 2012. My stepdad, Will, with his cousins in the Adirondacks, 1940s. A 1990s J.Crew catalogue.

  A portrait of me by Oberto Gili for Town & Country, 1996.

  ALWAYS PACK A PARTY DRESS

  WHEN I WAS TWENTY years old, I dreamed of being a waitress in Burlington, Vermont, for the summer. My then boyfriend, Andrew, who went to UVM, was planning to spend the summer there, and I felt I was old enough to live with him and have a “normal” job. During the previous two summers, I’d done what my parents had encouraged me to do and what most kids in my circle had done: worked an internship in New York City. It was common wisdom that the most likely way to land a plum job after college was to have one or two career-relevant “work experiences” under your belt by the time you graduated.

  In this regard, I was already ahead of the game. At age eighteen, I’d landed a job working for Laurie Jones, then the managing editor of New York magazine. I did some administrative work and gained an understanding of how a magazine was run, but essentially I spent much of my time writing up my personal views on New England boarding schools for Ms. Jones, whose sons were about to embark on the secondary school admissions process. I also had my first-ever sighting of a fashion editor. Her name was Martha Baker and she was the fashion director of the magazine. She was blond and thin and beautiful and at least six feet tall. She would walk purposefully through the office in, say, a fitted white sheath dress that accentuated her perfect tan. She was impossibly glamorous and intimidating. I never once had the chance to speak to her, but I was in awe of her. (I should mention that more than a decade later, I would actually meet Martha on Shelter Island and am proud to now call her my friend. She is every bit as fabulous as she always was but is much less intimidating than my first impression led me to believe.)

  I spent the following summer at Fine Line Features, the indie department of New Line Cinema. The highlight of my internship was working on post-production and promotional materials for Robert Altman’s Short Cuts and Gus Van Sant’s Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. My boss thought I looked enough like Uma Thurman to show up at a film screening wearing Uma’s cowgirl costume to promote the film. Even just impersonating an actress gave me a thrill.

  It was Presidents’ Day weekend of 1994 when I drove to New York from Brown in my hand-me-down 1984 Ford Country Squire station wagon (complete with wood siding that had begun to peel) to have dinner with my parents and discuss summer plans. I wasn’t sure how they’d react to my waitressing ambitions—I thought at best the chances were fifty-fifty that they’d be behind it. As I already had two unpaid internships under my belt, I thought they might be cool with the prospect of my actually earning some money. Generally speaking, I was an ambitious, even precocious teen, but there was a part of me that was just a suburban girl-next-door who wanted to do what most kids my age were doing.

  That Friday night, we went to dinner at my parents’ local hangout, a French bistro called Demarchelier on Eighty-Sixth Street and Madison. We knew the maître d’, Michael, well, and he was used to me pestering him about how often the owner’s brother, famed fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier, ate there. At the time, I was finishing my sophomore year as a double major in art history and visual arts. I had wanted to major in visual arts with a focus on photography, but my mom felt strongly that my time at an Ivy League school wouldn’t be best spent making art full-time. So we compromised by agreeing that I could major in art as long as I double-majored in something more academic (I chose art history).

  My interest in photography came from my stepfather, William. It was his weekend hobby, and he gave me my first camera—a Pentax K1000—and taught me how to develop and print photos in the darkroom he’d built in our basement. I would spend hours in there as a kid, developing negatives, mixing chemicals, and making prints. In high school, my love of photography was more art-based and academic—landscapes, portraits, etc. But by the time I was a sophomore, surrounded by fashion-obsessed friends and their subscriptions to Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, my interest in photography leaned toward fashion, and Patrick Demarchelier was one of my idols. He had photographed most of Vogue’s covers in the eighties and then most of Bazaar’s in the early nineties.

  As we were seated
at my parents’ favorite round corner table at Demarchelier that February, Michael came over to tell me that Patrick and his family were seated at a nearby table, and that he’d be happy to walk me over and introduce me. My face flushed even thinking about it, and I nervously turned him down. I knew I had to go speak to Patrick, and that I would, in my own way and in my own time, but I needed a few minutes to get my courage up. I remember what I was wearing—black flared pants and a white ruffled blouse from Contempo Casuals. Fashion was having a hippie moment, and to keep up with my more glamorous, affluent college friends, I bought fashion knockoffs at the mall.

  With growing pressure from my parents to seize the moment and introduce myself, I stood up from my chair and walked right past Patrick’s table and straight into the ladies’ room. My face was even more flushed—a mixture of nerves, embarrassment, and a few sips of my mom’s red wine—and to make it worse, I was growing out my home-cut bangs. I have never been a girl to pass up an opportunity, but I really did feel inhibited. For what was probably five minutes but felt like thirty, I just couldn’t pick myself up and get going. With the thought that he might leave before I got the chance to say hello as motivation, I felt my body moving toward the bathroom door before my mind had the chance to catch up.

  I made a beeline for the table. “Hi, my name is Amanda, and I’m a photography major in college. I’m a big fan of your work.”

  Patrick thanked me in a heavy French accent, and when he continued to speak, I had trouble understanding his rapid-fire, broken English. He tried again. Still nothing. I nodded politely, trying to look like I knew what he was saying. Finally, his wife, Mia, leaned toward me and said, “Patrick is inviting you to visit his studio tomorrow to watch a photo shoot.”

  “Oh, yes, that would be great. I would love to. Thank you,” I said in a high-pitched, nervous tone that made me sound five years younger. Again, Mia translated the arrangements and wrote down the studio address on a piece of paper.

  The next morning I awoke to a foot of fresh snow on the ground and more on the way. I left the house with plenty of time to make it from the Upper East Side down to Patrick’s Chelsea studio on the 6 train, but as I walked out the door, my mom came running down the hall to warn me that the subways had just been shut down for the day. I don’t even remember now how I ended up getting to Patrick’s studio, but I do remember that I was a half hour late. I was mortified.

  As I stepped onto the freight elevator, the super told me Patrick’s studio was actually closed because of the blizzard but that Patrick was in his office on the floor below. I walked into the cavernous, white, loft-like space to find Patrick sitting alone at his desk. The wall behind him was covered floor to ceiling with his most iconic photos, all immaculately framed. And there was no translator.

  Oh, no.

  I sat down nervously and looked around at the photos mounted gallery-like on the wall—Stephanie Seymour hanging from a tree in St. Barts, a personal portrait of Princess Diana and her boys, Linda Evangelista from the cover of Liz Tilberis’s first issue of the new Harper’s Bazaar. I told Patrick about growing up with a darkroom in our house, taking photography classes all through school, and waiting in line for an hour and a half to meet Richard Avedon at the Whitney. He took me upstairs to see the studio, and on the way up my heart broke when he told me they had been scheduled to shoot Kate Moss for the cover of Bazaar that day but had to cancel because of the weather. He then introduced me to his studio manager Wendell, who showed me around while Patrick disappeared back downstairs. Wendell said he felt bad that I had schlepped all the way down to the studio in a blizzard just to have it be closed, and he asked me if I would like to be an intern for the summer. Without revisiting the idea of Vermont for even a second, I said yes. My whole life changed in that moment.

  • • •

  A year later, in the winter of 1995, we were actually in St. Barts photographing Kate Moss for Bazaar. At this point I had been on shoots with Kate a few times, and I was pretty enamored of her, but the only thing she’d ever really said to me was that she loved an antique jade-and-gold ring that I wore, a hand-me-down from my mother. We arrived on set that first day in St. Barts, business as usual, and as I was walking into the kitchen, I heard his voice. It was Johnny Depp’s. Holy. Shit.

  I was that girl who had pictures of Johnny Depp from 21 Jump Street plastered on the ceiling above her bed. When I was a teenager, his was the last face I saw before I fell asleep every night and the first one I woke up to in the morning. I had at least fifteen different fantasies about how I was going to get Johnny Depp to be my boyfriend. I even wrote him an impassioned letter that I was sure sounded different, more sincere, than all the other fan mail he’d received. Not surprisingly, I never heard back.

  Obviously, I knew that he was Kate’s boyfriend, but I’d never imagined that he would come to a shoot. I was so stunned that I did a 180 and walked in the other direction. What could I possibly say to Johnny Depp? I avoided him entirely. An hour or so later, I saw him and Kate snuggling in a hammock while we finished setting up the lights. Later that day, they were making out next to the pool. While Kate was being photographed, Johnny lingered around but never got close enough to me to warrant an introduction. I was nervous the whole time—pretty miserable, in fact. How could I be in such close proximity to Johnny Depp and not have the nerve to at least say hello to him?

  Johnny Depp and Kate Moss, each looking as cool as the other, in the late nineties.

  At the end of shooting, Patrick announced that we would all have dinner at his house that night. I thought for sure Kate and Johnny would stay cuddled up in their room, but they joined us. In fact, I met Johnny minutes after I arrived at Patrick’s house. If nothing else happened, at least I’d shaken his hand. But then he sat right across from me at dinner!

  We made a little small talk here and there, and our conversations with others crossed paths a few times. But it was pretty obvious that, for him, Kate was the only person in the room. He stared at her the whole dinner. They interlocked their feet under the table. There was an incredibly intense love going on between them.

  By the next morning, Johnny had jetted off somewhere, and the shoot with Kate resumed as usual. I never had the same feelings for Johnny Depp again. I was so convinced of his love for Kate that it seemed time for me to move on. When I look back at pictures of them now, what I notice most is just how good they looked together—their beauty, their clothes, their style, their body language. It’s almost too much cool to handle. I guess it was for them, too.

  • • •

  Every single day on set with Patrick was exciting. The list of awe-inspiring shoots went on and on: Janet Jackson’s album cover, Nadja Auermann in couture in the Tuileries, Cindy Crawford for the cover of Bazaar, Claudia Schiffer (naked!) on the beach in St. Barts, Stephanie Seymour for Victoria’s Secret, Bond Girl Carole Bouquet for Chanel Nº5. But the highlight for me—hands-down—was Madonna. Patrick was scheduled to shoot the cover for her Bedtime Stories album in Miami. I wasn’t sure I’d be included; I was just the intern and I assumed Wendell, Patrick’s studio manager, would take Christine and Margaret, the first two assistants. But Wendell was a sweetheart—sometimes—and he walked into the studio one day and said, “Well, it’s going to be an all-girls trip to Miami next week.”

  “Really?” I asked in disbelief. I’d been a lifelong Madonna fan—as a teenager I’d dressed up as her for Halloween, for talent shows, sometimes just when I was bored on a Saturday.

  “Yup. I’m sending the three of you. I’ve already worked with Madonna and I have tons to catch up on in the studio. You three will be fine on your own.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to contain my excitement. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t fuck it up,” he said with a wink, and then turned around to leave the room.

  It was August in Miami and seriously hot. Christine, Margaret, and I were staying in a small art deco
hotel on Collins Avenue. A van came to pick us up at the crack of dawn to take us to the Eden Roc hotel where the shoot would start.

  We were there for hours before Madonna arrived. When she finally did, I couldn’t believe how tiny she was. And that was with six-inch wedge heels on! She wore all black, with black sunglasses and platinum-blond hair that was still wet from the shower. She had a diamond stud pierced through her nose, and I did everything I could not to wince when I caught sight of it. For some reason it looked painful. She was polite and friendly and went around the room introducing herself to everyone on set.

  After another couple of hours of hair, makeup, and wardrobe, she walked onto the set wearing nothing more than a fluffy whisp of lingerie. She crawled on the bed in the hotel room and began to work her come-hither moves for Patrick’s camera. The whole scene was surreal.

  In these situations, I felt invisible. As the intern, barely into my twenties, I was easily the least important person in the room. Sometimes the talent chatted with Patrick’s first assistant while they adjusted the camera or took the light reading, but as the third in line I was used to feeling lucky if I even got so much as an introduction. There were some exceptions. I remember Cindy Crawford being incredibly friendly; we once happened to ride the elevator up to the studio together and when I pushed the button for Patrick’s floor, she asked me if I was working on the shoot and then introduced herself. “Hi, I’m Cindy,” she said, as if I didn’t already know. She touched the Elsa Peretti for Tiffany single-diamond necklace on her neck while looking at mine and said, “We have the same necklace.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I replied. “My boyfriend when I was eighteen gave it to me. He said he wanted to be the first man to ever give me a diamond.”