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

by Amanda Brooks

  This mindlessness runs counter to the very best thing about fashion. Many people love fashion for the clothes—God knows I do—but what keeps me wanting to follow it season after season, even if I didn’t buy one thing for myself, is to witness and digest the progression of ideas. Following fashion is like being on a train—everyone has a similar view out of the window. For the most part, we all get tired of looking at the same thing after a while and we want to see what’s next. Some people may prefer the view on the left side or the right side, or from the front of the train or out the back. Some may want to sit facing in the direction the train is moving, while others don’t mind the feeling of moving backward. Some may be moved by watching the landscape, while others get more from looking at the buildings, the cars, or the people in their view. But still, we are all having similar experiences, and we all have pretty much the same references. In order to internalize all this stimulation and formulate your own point of view, reflection is essential. My experience of fashion month was like being on that train going 1,000 miles an hour—so fast that everything I saw was a blur, and it made me dizzy. It’s amazing to me that I was able to make all the decisions that I did—what shows I liked, what looks I preferred, what we should advertise, what I wanted to write about, what the most important trends were. All of those choices were made in an instant, often before the end of a four-minute runway show—all while taking photos, writing notes, and making comments to my bosses and the buyers at the same time. Some were good decisions, some not. Shows I thought I hated I ended up loving weeks later, once my brain had had the chance to digest the idea presented. Other times I declared passionate love for a look or a collection only to go off it days or weeks later, like a catchy pop song. All jammed together like this, none of it felt meaningful to me.

  At the end of that first fashion week in Paris, I admitted my compromised state to myself and to my husband. I had called him the night before I came home.

  “I can never do this again,” I told him in all seriousness.

  “Just take it one step at a time,” he counseled. “You’ll catch up with yourself and get some rest and it won’t seem so bad in a few weeks.”

  But there I was again, six months later, trying to pull off that childbirth trick of forgetting the pain until you do it all over again. Little did I know this trip would be even less successful. Now I knew exactly what the month ahead would be like. From a fashion perspective, I was always very excited for the month of shows to start. As a disciple of fashion’s winds of change, I was always craving new information, new inspiration, and new people added to the mix. I never knew exactly where the brilliance was going to come from, but I knew it would come from somewhere.

  From a personal perspective, however, I knew fashion month would very likely bring me to my knees. The autumn round of New York Fashion Week would start the same week as the kids’ new school year. Curriculum nights and parents cocktails were not in the cards for me. The worst part was being home in the same city with them but not being available to them. My husband would take over my breakfast duties for that week while I got dressed or wrote up a trend report, and then I’d get home after they’d gone to bed. It was hard on all of us to be in the same house but not really be interacting with one another. Christopher would be up when I got home, but I usually had some work to finish up or I would just be too spent to hold a conversation. My MO was to order a thin-crust pizza from Lil’ Frankie’s (half mushroom, half pepperoni) and eat it in bed while watching Oprah.

  Wearing a Phillip Lim fringe dress and Alaïa shoes at the Barneys party celebrating our collaboration with Carine Roitfeld.

  Next was Milan. The best part of Milan was the feeling that I had to take care of only myself. I was away from the distraction/temptation of my family, and I kept in place my strict no-socializing policy to save energy for the weeks ahead. In the morning or late evening I made time to walk on the treadmill while watching endless Modern Family episodes in the basement gym of my hotel. I also made a commitment to myself not to drink alcohol during fashion month. Now I am a girl who loves my glass of wine in the evening, and this was not easy. But I didn’t feel I had any room for error, energy-wise. Waking up with the slightest headache or sluggishness in the morning might just zap me of the fragile resolve I had to get myself through the month. For these reasons, Milan was always lonely. But it was short. And I knew well enough to save my energy for the final nonstop ten days ahead.

  Arriving in Paris was always enormously comforting. Contrary to Milan, Paris just makes me feel happy regardless of my circumstances. Also, the fashion is always best in Paris. Sometimes it was even transformative. I remember the Haider Ackermann show that second season I was at Barneys. I had been blown away by the first show I saw, the way the girls moved down the runway to Leonard Cohen’s “A Thousand Kisses Deep,” the way the clothes were layered and draped over their frames, the incredibly deep and vivid jewel-tone colors. But it was so new looking and unexpected that it took me a few weeks to process it through my thoughts and my emotions. So in the next show, I was more open to what I was about to see and didn’t have to think so hard about it. In the middle of one of those crazy days when you are in back-to-back-to-back shows, racing around through the Paris streets to get from one place to another in record time, that show stopped me dead in my tracks. Time stood still for just a few moments, and I was present. Fashion shows are always run at a breakneck speed—the music pulses, the girls march, I manically take notes and try to capture an in-focus photo as they whizz by me. In contrast, the Haider show that season was slow. But not in a torturous way (don’t worry, there were those, too). In fact, I never wanted it to end. It may have been the only peaceful moment I had in Paris that season. I had the chance to tell Haider himself a few weeks later that his show may have been the only time I felt truly present during that entire fashion month. He loved it, of course, and explained that that had been his intention.

  And then everything came to a roaring halt. Despite the pleasure of the beautiful city and the transformative shows, my fragile mental and emotional state suddenly decided to manifest itself physically. I was in the Christian Louboutin showroom trying on every shoe I could squeeze my not-quite-sample-size foot into, when I realized I was late for my Lanvin appointment. As I stepped off the sidewalk in my heels toward the taxi, I misjudged the height of the curb and landed awkwardly. It didn’t hurt—I just noticed that it jarred me a bit. I then arrived at Lanvin, and it was decided with Scott, our salesperson, that we’d chat over lunch and then walk through the collection. A waiter brought me a plate and I sat down and inhaled it—I was always ravenous in Europe from the long hours on my feet running around. But when I got up out of my chair, I couldn’t stand up straight. My back was hunched over. I sat down for a sec and then tried again. It wasn’t as painful as it was just not physically possible. My lower back had locked into a curved position and wasn’t budging. Thinking that movement would loosen it up, I grabbed my camera and walked around the showroom taking pictures of the shoes and bags I liked. Scott came over and asked me if I was okay. “Well, not really,” I replied. “My back is stuck like this, but I am trying to move around to see if it will fix itself.” He held up the satin evening clutches and jeweled sandals for me to snap so I could be done quickly and get out of there.

  By the time I left Lanvin, the muscles in my lower back had begun to spasm from being held in such an unnatural position. It started to hurt. I walked down the street and got in my taxi. You’d have thought I would have gone straight back to my hotel room to lay down and call the doctor—it was that bad. But I was determined. My next appointment was the Céline showroom, and that was my most looked-forward-to hour of the entire fashion month. It was what made the previous three weeks bearable, knowing that Céline would be waiting there for me to bring back my enthusiasm and wonder. I did love the Céline runway shows, conceptually, but it was the commercial collection, viewable only in the showroom, tha
t really got my blood up.

  I’m sure I embarrassed myself walking into the Céline showroom like a reincarnation of the hunchback of Notre Dame. I was met by my bosses’ quizzical gazes, as if to say, “What the hell happened to you?” They weren’t the only ones staring. I could barely even stand up at this point. All the muscles in my entire back had seized up, and the only comfortable position was for me to squat down resting my butt on my—yes, they were Céline—high heels. I was in the middle of the showroom, crouching between the models, snapping pics manically. Time was getting shorter and shorter. It was as if my body was on a countdown. I knew that in a few minutes I wouldn’t be able to move or walk at all. When I explained to my colleagues that I wasn’t going to be able to go to the Paco Rabanne show that followed, they all looked relieved for me.

  Back at my hotel, I rolled out of the cab and managed to make my way over to the front desk. The concierge had to come around to my side of the counter because my body was now forcibly positioned at a 45-degree angle, and I couldn’t raise my head enough to look over it. When I explained what had happened, he helped me to my room, removed my shoes, and raised my legs up on the bed so I could lie on my side in the same hunched position. The hotel doctor arrived miraculously fast, but I was skeptical already. I’d been dealing with bulging discs in my back for a couple of years, and I knew exactly what had happened: One of the discs had now herniated entirely. I also knew that painkillers weren’t going to be very effective, if at all. I had tried all the drugs for spinal pain available on the American market, and none had given me much relief. But he was able to give me a muscle relaxer strong enough to enable me to get around the corner to the shiatsu massage parlor. The therapist didn’t speak English, but I could just feel tremendous empathy in his hands. In this current state, I couldn’t lay flat, so he piled up a mountain of pillows to maintain the curve of my back and to allow me to try to relax at the same time. He worked so hard to give me some relief, but when the massage was over, it hadn’t done the magic I was hoping for.

  I started to get panicky. I rang Diane von Furstenberg, the only person in Paris who I knew well enough to ask for help. She had lived there on occasion throughout her life, and I hoped she would know of a miracle doctor who could come rescue me.

  “Get on the first plane home,” she advised, saying that she didn’t know where to send me in Paris, and besides, American doctors would be better for this kind of problem. I was so grateful to have a definitive answer from someone I trusted. The only trouble was, how on earth was I going to get myself home in this state? It was already ten o’clock at night. I rang the airlines and booked myself on the first morning flight at seven A.M.

  It took a village to get me into a taxi that following morning at four A.M. The maid from the hotel had packed my bags for me the night before. The bellboy carried everything including my purse down to the car. The man at reception came up and escorted me down to the lobby. The taxi driver tilted the front seat all the way back so I could crawl in the car and lay on my side.

  I must have looked ridiculous going through the airport. Thank God for those mini trolleys Charles de Gaulle has that allow you to push your carry-on luggage to the gate—the push bar gave me something to lean on, or rather, hunch over. As I was approaching the gate, horror struck as I realized that as it was nearing the end of Paris Fashion Week, there were bound to be people I knew on my plane. I was already woozy from all the ineffective painkillers I was on, and I was in a seriously compromising physical condition. I couldn’t bear to talk to anyone.

  Clockwise from top left: with Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler; with Alexa Chung and Carven’s Guillaume Henry; with Joseph Altuzarra; with Francois Nars; with Phillip Lim; with The Row designers Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.

  At the gate, I couldn’t sit comfortably in a chair, so I crouched down again, as I had in the Céline showroom, and rested my butt on my heels. I tried not to look around me too much for fear of making eye contact with someone I knew. But I did look up once, and I saw Bill Cunningham, the New York Times photographer, finding a seat nearby. Bill, while being a legend in the industry for many decades, is also one of the most gentle and kind men I have ever met. In that moment, he was actually a comforting sight.

  I was booked in business class, and before confirming the flight I had checked to be sure that this plane had the seats that went completely flat. The only way I could tolerate the pain of lying down was to be curled up on my side. Otherwise there was no way I would have survived the eight-hour journey home.

  Once on the plane, I explained to the stewardess that I wouldn’t be able to sit upright in my chair for takeoff. She was unsympathetic. She told me that if I couldn’t follow safety protocol I wouldn’t be able to fly on the plane. My eyes pathetically welled up. There was no way I was getting off the plane, having come this far. So I lay sideways on the flat bed until we taxied down the runway, planning to put my chair up for only the briefest time. But in preparation to do so I took the whopper muscle relaxer/sleeping pill that the doctor had given me for the flight, and I don’t remember anything else until we were preparing to land.

  The residual effects of the medicine helped me disembark the plane and make it through immigration, despite being in a heavy mental fog. A skycap collected my bags, and I pushed an empty luggage cart to support my back while shuffling through the airport. As I came through the barrier between customs and arrivals, Christopher was standing there talking to Bill Cunningham. I overheard their conversation as I approached. “Rumor has it you shoot digital now,” Christopher was inquiring of Bill.

  “No, no, still shooting film,” Bill insisted.

  And then my husband caught sight of me, and his expression softened. His eyes were so sympathetic, and at the same time he was laughing at my ridiculous posture. It was the first time I laughed, too. It was funny.

  Fashion girl crippled while stepping off the curb from Louboutin showroom. Further damage done at Lanvin showroom. Final nail in coffin at Céline.

  We went home and I took to my bed. I would go into the hospital first thing the next morning for an epidural steroid injection that promised to have me back on my feet in three days, as if nothing ever happened, until four months later when the steroid might reabsorb back into my body and I would have to do it again. I hadn’t told the kids I was coming home early. They weren’t expecting me for another two days, and I thought it would be fun to surprise them. I always knew when the kids were about to arrive home from school because my dog, Ginger, would hear them in the elevator long before I could, and she would stand up and get her tail going. My nanny was in on the surprise, and when the kids came into the apartment, she asked them to go get something in my bedroom. And there I was.

  • • •

  The kids were so relieved to see me, and I, them. The first week I was away, I had Skyped them every day at midnight my time, six P.M. their time. They’d put the laptop on the dining table so I could “have dinner with them.” It was lovely. But then my jet lag subsided, and if I was back at the hotel and finished with work before midnight, I was desperate to go to bed. At a certain point, Zach flat-out refused to talk to me. He said it was too painful to hear my voice and not have me home. Other fashion-front-row moms recounted similar stories, often on the edge of tears. Once I was sitting next to Chicago boutique owner Ikram Goldman, who is famous for having styled Michelle Obama for the inauguration and during her first few years in the White House. She asked to see pictures of my kids. When I pulled them up on my iPad and recounted to her that sweet Zach had stopped speaking to me, she burst into tears.

  “Why are you crying?” I asked. Ikram always did fashion month with her husband and twin boys in tow.

  “I just can’t imagine giving up that much for fashion,” she exclaimed.

  I have thought about that moment with Ikram many times since. And in one sense, I felt very defeated. Fashion month, especially that last
week in Paris, had long been a goal, a dream. I felt I had utterly failed at it. I asked myself, how would it be possible for me to do this successfully? If I could redesign this scenario on my own terms, how could I make it work for me?

  It had taken only about three months at Barneys to admit to myself (secretly) that I wasn’t happy. I don’t think I was prepared to say it out loud at that point, but in my heart I just knew it. Yes, a part of it was the shock of how much each fashion month would cost me, both physically and emotionally, but the other part was that I just couldn’t find a groove in my new role. I missed the autonomy and flexibility of working independently, and it was very hard for me to find creative energy in the corporate environment of a midtown office building. I worked so hard to make myself fall in love with my new office. I spent my own money on walnut bookshelves, a vintage Moroccan rug, and a pretty desk. I installed my usual inspiration board and carted in my vintage fashion book collection. Regardless, I would often just sit at my desk and wonder how the hell I’d ended up there. Nothing felt right, and eventually I lost my confidence. I look back now and can see that many of the projects I started or worked on in my time there turned out successfully, but my insecurity in my surroundings and in the compromises I’d made to be there made me question everything I did.