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

by Amanda Brooks

  Official interviews with Daniella and eventually with Mark followed, and I found myself feeling confident that I was qualified, perhaps even the right person, for the job. But was the job right for me? My friends were divided. A few were concerned for me. Knowing me in the context of my family, they found it hard to imagine me compromising on any part of being a wife and mother. One friend who knows me very well and has decades of experience on the fashion month circuit said to me bluntly, “That is so not the right job for you, Amanda.” But there was a part of me that figured maybe all the investment I had made in my family had paid off, and maybe the time had come when I was able to afford greater independence and freedom in the work choices I made. The kids were in a great place at that moment, and my husband, who is always supportive, offered to pick up the slack for me like I often had done for him.

  Other friends couldn’t believe I was even questioning whether the job—should it be offered to me—was the best direction to take. It was one of the most coveted jobs in fashion! It was the perfect culmination of all my previous jobs! The job included all the things I loved doing! Francisco Costa, designer at Calvin Klein, grabbed me by the shoulders in my living room one Saturday morning, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Are you kidding me?” when I expressed my reservations. “You were born to do this job!” he continued. The part that resonated with me the most was that the duties associated with the job truly were all the things I most loved doing. I beamed when I read the job description—attending all fashion shows, presentations, and showroom appointments; helping to shape the buys; choosing the looks to be featured in the catalogues and advertising; discovering new designers; working on the design and merchandising of the Barneys private-label collections; overseeing fashion displayed on mannequins and in store windows; compiling and presenting trend presentations; and having my own regular blog on the Barneys website. It sounded so perfect, a true dream job.

  • • •

  There was also a third factor in my decision-making process, but perhaps it was not so far in the forefront of my consciousness at the time. I had been through a similar process a few years earlier with Vanity Fair, interviewing for the same position—fashion director—of the magazine. I was unsure when I was asked to interview because I had recently left Tuleh and had devoted myself to forging my own way in the industry after working for so many “name brands” and was deep in the trenches of writing I Love Your Style. But, the job description and the allure of that title had captured my imagination. After my initial interview with the managing editor, I was invited to come back and meet with Graydon Carter, the editor in chief.

  I had prepared for meeting Graydon very much in the same way as I had for meeting Mark Lee, by ensuring that my clothes would make a strong first impression. I didn’t have much income of my own at the time and my closet was filled entirely with Tuleh (the brand I had just broken up with), so I decided to wear vintage. I had a sixties black wool dress with brown mink collar and cuffs. It was “just fashion enough” to look relevant but not over the top. I then mixed my best bracelet—a walnut-and-gold chain-link one from Seaman Schepps—with some funky seventies ones I’d found at a thrift shop in London. I carried my brown YSL ostrich Muse bag (a gift from the designer) and wore black opaque tights and black suede stiletto boots from Manolo Blahnik, which I’d bought years earlier.

  “Aren’t you cold?” was the first thing Graydon asked me, referring to the unseasonably cold early-winter day, when I walked in his office. Before I could answer, he continued, “Well, I suppose you have a car waiting for you downstairs.”

  “I took the subway,” I responded dryly. I am a subway girl. Always have been. Especially during Fashion Week. When the tents were at Bryant Park, I could get on the F train a block from my house and get off right at the park entrance. Riding the subway, especially when overdressed, is a quintessential part of the New York experience. Even years later when I was fashion director at Barneys and wearing Alaïa heels to work every day, I slid on my Repettos morning and evening to walk down the stairs to the train.

  I could tell he was impressed that I took the subway, but he was right about me being freezing cold. There was a problem with the dress I was wearing—because of the fur on the cuffs I couldn’t fit a coat over it. It wouldn’t be the first or the last time I suffered for fashion.

  Anyway, Graydon and I talked for an hour and a half and I felt that it couldn’t have gone better. He told me all about the nice things that friends and former employers in the industry had said about me. And we discussed the fact that while I was an unusual candidate for the job, having not actually worked at a magazine before, I certainly had a lot of experience within the industry, and perhaps my outsider view would bring a fresh perspective.

  The next day, Graydon’s managing editor called to say how much Graydon liked me and that they were going to start calling my references. I was now completely swept up in the fantasy of having this job and feeling hopeful that it just might be offered to me. But then a few days passed, and then a couple of weeks passed, and I didn’t hear anything from Vanity Fair. I would eventually get a lovely note from Graydon telling me that I didn’t get the job. I never did get an explanation for why the job was given to someone else—was it my lack of magazine experience? Did office politics get in the way? I’ll never know. Regardless, I was gutted. I had never been rejected professionally like that before, and it stung. Of course I can see now that it was good for me to have had that experience of great expectation and the ensuing disappointment, but I can also see that when the second chance came around to be a fashion director, my ambition to succeed this time may have colored my decision-making process, whether I was fully aware of it or not.

  The gracious rejection letter I received from Graydon Carter. It has motivated me ever since.

  • • •

  Despite the equally compelling arguments from both sides regarding the Barneys job, what proved irresistible was this idea that the job would give me access to all the designers I knew and wanted to know. I would encourage them in growing their brands wisely and effectively. I would support them and challenge them. To be the fashion director of Barneys truly would be my arrival at that place on the horizon—as a champion for designers—that I had plotted out with Mark Flashen years earlier. And, just a few days after I made up my mind, the job was mine.

  FASHION LESSON NO. 10

  THE “COAT OVER YOUR SHOULDERS” LOOK

  WHILE I love the look of a coat just casually thrown over my shoulders, I struggle with it from a practicality point of view. I don’t know about you, but when I go out for a day in the city, I am usually carrying the biggest bag I can possibly manage and am headed for the subway. The first problem is the bag—it’s not possible to sling a bag over your shoulder when your coat is delicately resting there. Second, navigating crowded stairs with people rushing and squeezing past you is pretty much a guarantee that your coat will be pushed off your shoulders and onto the ground.

  I’ve come to the conclusion that the “coat over my shoulders” look is only allowed in the evening, when I am delicately navigating my way into a cab and am carrying only a clutch in my hands. Plus, I love the contrast of a tailored jacket or coat thrown over a far more feminine and delicate dress or blouse. It’s that “I’m cold so my boyfriend gave me his jacket” look.

  If you find a look that doesn’t work for your general lifestyle, find a time or place that it would better suit and look forward to those moments.

  Fashion editor Virginie Mouzat gracefully pulling off the coat over her shoulders look—in leopard no less!

  FASHION LESSON NO. 11

  MIXING DENIM

  DO YOU mix denim? I do. It took me a while to get my head around how it works, but I eventually figured out how I like it. Right now mixing denim is a trend, but it’s also a classic concept that never goes out of style, so I just carry on whether it’s in or out of fashion. What wo
rks for me is a denim or chambray shirt (unbuttoned as far as you dare to go) worn with jeans—either skinny or flared. Think seventies Farrah Fawcett without the winged-out hair. But here’s the thing—there’s a delicate balance between color and texture. I like to create a balance between the two. If my shirt was on the pale side of denim and new, then I would choose jeans that were also pale but more worn looking, even with holes in them. So the colors match, but the textures are contrasting. On the other hand, you could contrast the colors—pale denim on top, dark denim on the bottom. But then I would wear a thinner chambray shirt with darker raw denim jeans, again, creating some contrast. Putting together denim is easier than it sounds; it’s just a matter of trial and error until you like what you see.

  Hannah Henderson (above) and Meredith Melling (below) are both equally successful mixing denim in their own way.

  Vanessa Traina reinvents the jeans and a sweater look.

  STYLE INFLUENCE

  UPDATED CLASSIC

  OVER THE past few years, I have been most interested in following the style of girls who are bringing something new to the concept of classic style. It’s not that anything is getting reinvented, but girls such as Vanessa Traina, Gaia Repossi, and Emmanuelle Alt are wearing timeless pieces such as chunky-knit sweaters, loafers, jeans, blazers, pumps, and button-down shirts in a newly simple and refined way. You could call it minimalist classic, but to me that conjures up ideas of conceptual clothes that have nothing to do with what I am talking about. Of course these clothes are new and made of more modern materials that perhaps lend a sharper, chicer look to them, but on the whole they are pieces that could have existed in most any of the past five decades, worn with a new eye toward interesting proportion and a sense of discipline to just wear a great shirt, a great pair of trousers, and a great pair of shoes, without adding all sorts of bells and whistles. Sounds easy? Not so much. Although I aspire to this style, I often find myself adding a scarf, or a bracelet, or buying a print I fall in love with that ruins the simplicity of the look. Live and learn, I guess. And in the meantime, I’ll put these girls up on a pedestal!

  In Paris for the shows, wearing an Olatz silk shirt, Rag & Bone pants, and Céline sunglasses.

  OF ALL THE PLACES IN THE WORLD TO FALL APART, I NEVER THOUGHT IT WOULD HAPPEN IN PARIS

  WHEN I accepted the job as fashion director of Barneys, I couldn’t help but think of that long-held ambition to sit in the front row of the Paris shows, dating back to when I worked for Patrick all those years before. Finally, I would go to every show I had dreamed about—Céline! Balenciaga! Balmain! Rick Owens! Isabel Marant! I would then go to all the showrooms to see and touch the clothes up close. I would slowly flip through the racks, considering each item one at a time. I would decide which outfits I thought were best for the advertising, the catalogues, the windows. I would help the buyers decide which were the most important looks to order, and I would plot carefully and choose my best angle of argument if they disagreed. Maybe I would even get to try on a piece or two. My first day at Barneys took place two days before the start of fashion month, as we call it in the industry. New York Fashion Week was up first. My assistant gave me my schedule, which plotted out nine days of back-to-back shows, buying appointments, and fashion parties followed by a weekend off. I’d have the following Monday in the office, and then on Tuesday I would leave for five days in Milan, followed by ten days in Paris. My travel schedule started at eight A.M. and finished around ten P.M., not including dinner. No days off.

  The hours were fine. I’d done it before and could do it again. Sure, the idea of keeping that pace for a whole month was intimidating, but I was so excited to get going, to see all the fashion, and to have a say. I was inspired by the feeling that I was playing an important, coveted role in the industry that I loved and had been a part of for so long.

  Truth be told, I have never been a big fan of Milan—I had spent a lot of lonely weeks working there in the past, and I never quite got over the feeling of gloom that descended upon me whenever I arrived. But Paris . . . Paris would be my treat at the end of the long weeks ahead of me.

  When I arrived in Paris at the end of that first fashion month, I was pretty cross-eyed. But nonetheless, I was so happy to be there. I arrived on a Monday evening, and I would have a few coveted hours off on Tuesday morning before seeing Anthony Vaccarello’s show that afternoon. I slept in for the first time in three weeks, I washed my hair, and then I set out to explore the area surrounding my hotel in the sixth arrondissement. There was a Mariage Frères tea shop, my mother’s favorite, where I stocked up on gifts to bring home. There was also a little Japanese shiatsu massage parlor that would become my occasional late-night stop after shows, if I could catch them before they closed. I then set out walking across Île Saint-Louis toward the Marais. I wound through the streets and arrived at rue de Saintonge, stopping at the Isabel Marant shop (for me) and Finger in the Nose (for my kids). Finally I arrived at Merci, the bohemian home-and-fashion concept store that is always my favorite stop in Paris. I lost myself browsing through the vintage furniture and kitchen supply departments, bought some linen dinner napkins, and then settled down for my all-time favorite lunch in their ground-floor café. They had this incredible buffet of healthy but satisfying vegetable salads and cold-pressed juices. After days of endless pasta eating in Italy, it was a relief to have something clean and fresh before moving on to the even heavier French meals. When I was finished I treated myself to a giant portion of peach and raspberry crumble and a great cup of coffee and then made my way back to my hotel to start the final stretch of fashion month.

  The Paris fashion show schedule was especially grueling. It was the longest, stretching out over ten days, and the most jam-packed. It was also the most crowded. On the whole, the show venues in Paris were smaller than in New York and Milan and the street-style photographers lurking outside were more abundant and aggressive. God forbid you were walking anywhere in the vicinity of Anna Dello Russo, you might get pushed out of the way or even onto the ground if you were in the way of a blogger’s lens. I also had to figure out how to handle having my own picture taken. There was nowhere near the urgency to get a snap of me as there was for a veritable street-style star like Giovanna Battaglia, Taylor Tomasi Hill, or Miroslava Duma, but still I would reliably be asked by the crowd of photographers to pose for a picture. When I went to shows under my own steam, this was no problem as my time was my own. But now that I was walking in with my bosses and colleagues at Barneys, it felt wrong to linger while getting my picture taken. I learned how to just pause briefly, let them snap a pic or two, say thank you, and then keep moving. At the time, street-style photography and blogs had already made a big impact on the industry. For the fashion industry insiders—editors, buyers, writers—it was a nuisance to have the already back-to-back show schedule get jammed up by the crowds and mayhem outside. It also changed the way people dressed. Suddenly, it seemed, everyone was wearing increasingly ridiculous outfits—Color blocking! Fur! Trendy shoes! Personalized bags! Oversize jewelry!—in order to catch the eye of the bloggers. I think we all fell prey to it in one way or another, but the theatricality wore out its welcome quickly. You couldn’t possibly buy enough clothes to wear a new and exciting outfit every day (at least without going broke!), and the option of borrowing clothes from designers came with its own level of exhaustion (deliveries, returns, fittings, etc.). By the time I was in Paris that first time with Barneys, I had already pared down my wardrobe to more classic and wearable pieces. I felt good about not dressing for the photographers, and their lack of interest in my less-noticeable outfits made my show entrances and exits more manageable.

  I felt the best in Paris on the days when I forced myself to get up before dawn and take a walk by the Seine, even just for twenty minutes, to calm my mind with the view and sound of water before heading out to back-to-back shows and appointments for the remainder of the day and into the night. Our day usually started with an
eight A.M. coffee or breakfast meeting before the scheduled nine A.M. show. Then we raced around Paris in a car, going from show to show to show. Later in the week as the show pace slowed, we’d go to showroom appointments in between shows, to see a collection in person, have a business meeting with brand executives, and then take a look at the orders the buyers were placing. In ten days, we sat down for lunch probably two or three times. Usually, we grabbed a sandwich to eat in the car (my favorite was saucisson sec with butter and cornichon on a baguette) or we snacked on food served in a showroom while placing our buys. The Belgians—Ann Demeulemeester, Haider Ackermann—always had the best showroom lunch, serving homemade soups and bread, grain and vegetable salads, a board of beautiful charcuterie, and excellent coffee. Then back to shows and showrooms until we sometimes grabbed dinner, or not, before the nine P.M. show, which really started at nine thirty P.M., and got me back to my hotel by ten fifteen P.M. Maybe I have a fragile constitution, but I never understand how people socialize during the final weeks of fashion month, especially the retailers who see nearly every show and visit every showroom. I would collapse into my bed the minute I had the chance, eat a late room-service supper, catch up on work, squeeze in a Skype with the kids, and then pass out as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  Sometimes I enjoy putting together outfits from old favorites in my closet like this Proenza Schouler skirt and Ralph Lauren camisole. I’m wearing them with a Phillip Lim belt and boots and a Céline bag and sunglasses.

  To say that I was overstimulated would be a huge understatement. It wasn’t that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy looking at fashion all day, every day throughout the previous three weeks. Or that I wasn’t inspired by the challenge and responsibility of my new role. Or that I wasn’t able to handle writing trend reports, blogging, and answering urgent e-mails for two hours after I got back to my hotel so late each night. Or that talking to colleagues, peers, and coworkers all day like I was at a perpetual cocktail party hadn’t worn me out. I was managing all that. The issue was that I didn’t have ample time to process any of it. My brain was inundated from the minute I woke up until the minute I went to bed and then I’d do it again the next day and the next day and the next day. After a while I just started going numb. Even as I write about it, it takes me a minute or two just to remember which Céline show I first went to. The fact that sitting in the front row of my first Céline show in Paris is not forever indelibly marked in the forefront of my memory tells me that I must have been out of my mind.