—The cool factor of your clients. This is another aspect of consulting that works on the balance. No one expects all your clients to be cool, not even in the fashion industry where everyone is ultra self-conscious about appearances. It is usually the uncool ones that pay the most, either because they are very big companies or because they desperately need help. It is often those jobs that make it possible for you to work for smaller, cooler companies that pay you a fraction of the amount but deliver a different kind of satisfaction. Some of my most meaningful work experiences as a consultant came from working for small, start-up designers who paid me in clothes or jewelry for my services.
MAKING TIME FOR YOUR OWN CREATIVITY
—The final key to happiness through consulting is having a project that is just yours. When I first started Amanda Brooks Inc., I was still writing I Love Your Style. I thought it would be really difficult to manage both at the same time, but I quickly learned how much I valued carving time out of my day to indulge my own point of view. It also helped my relationship with my clients because it took the pressure off trying to satisfy my creativity through the work I did for them. I was able to be more objective and less attached to the outcome. When I finished I Love Your Style, I immediately felt the hole that project left in my work life. So I started a blog. Your own project can be anything—my friend Taylor runs a flower-arranging business in between the work she does for her fashion clients—as long as you find even just an hour a day to indulge your own instincts and flex your own creative muscle.
Heading to a fashion show in the new Alaïa skirt and shoes and Céline sunglasses I bought at Barneys with my mother’s vintage Sonia Rykiel lace top.
I HAVE ALWAYS SPENT TOO MUCH MONEY ON CLOTHES . . . AND IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN WORTH IT (UNTIL IT WASN’T)
IN 2005, I was thirty-one years old with two children. I worked at home, writing I Love Your Style and running my consulting company, and I had financial priorities beyond spending all my money on clothes; I had kids with future college educations to save for and a larger apartment to maintain. Inspired by an increased sense of self-knowledge and a growing focus on practicality, my clothes were still fashionable, but they were far more casual and timeless. I resorted to carrying an old Hogan “fishing bag” that went with everything (gone were the days of changing my purse every day to match my outfit), and it had a cross-body strap so that I could be hands-free to push a stroller or hold a child’s hand. I also bought three sets of Phillip Lim cashmere track suit pants and matching cardigans that could be worn with slippers at home or ballet flats to pick up the kids from school.
Around that time, Harper’s Bazaar called to interview me for a regular column called “Dressing for Your Age,” which prompted me to think more specifically about balancing real life and fashion. I told them that I hated the word appropriate (overused during my upbringing) because I believe that if you love what you wear and it suits you, who cares what anyone else thinks? Nan Kempner in a crop top at age seventy-two comes to mind. That said, my style had started to gravitate toward a more classic and understated look, because (A) I felt most like myself when not overshadowed by what I was wearing, (B) it worked well in my lifestyle, and (C) as I reprioritized my finances, I wanted to buy things that wouldn’t go out of style next season.
As I settled into my thirties, I also borrowed less clothing from designers and dug into my closet for evening pieces handed down from my mother, or things I’d bought years before and had put away for another day. My best rediscovery was a floor-length dress that I’d bought at the Alaïa outlet in my early twenties, when not many people were wearing his clothes. With his return to big-time relevance in the mid-2000s, that red dress, worn with my mom’s vintage teal Alaïa belt, was suddenly the chicest thing. My picture made it into the papers far more often for wearing original things that actually belonged to me rather than borrowed fashions du jour.
Just as I was moving away from an obsession with having the latest thing, I landed the job as fashion director at Barneys, and everything I had learned up until that point about investing wisely in fashion went straight out the window.
We can all relate to the feeling of overspending on clothes, can’t we? You’re standing there in a store in front of something you feel you have to have, and suddenly your entire future hinges on the boyfriend you’re going to get if you wear this out tonight, or the job you’ll get if you wear that to the interview. And in many cases, it’s true, it does. Clothes have an awesome ability to empower us to be who we want to be or to convince others of who we are. They allow us to be flexible, too. By day we can be a serious businesswoman; by night, we can transform into a sexy seductress. Or we can change from bohemian goddess to sleek minimalist from one day to the next, depending on what our lives require from us.
Although this T-shirt looks like nothing, it was a big splurge at the Céline boutique in Florence. I got the Chanel bag in L.A. and the Céline shoes in Milan. Traveling always makes me want to shop.
Spending money on clothes is relative, though. When I was in my early twenties and my parents were still helping me with my rent, spending irresponsibly meant buying two pairs of trousers instead of one at Zara, or going back to the ATM at the flea market when I’d already spent the $100 I’d budgeted for myself that day. As I got older, spending irresponsibly meant ordering too much at a designer’s showroom so soon after their runway show that the intoxication of newness had yet to wear off. I justified it by telling myself that since I was only paying wholesale, I didn’t need to pay too much attention to how much I was ordering. That resulted in some painful surprises. Eventually, overspending on clothes meant making impulse handbag purchases at Céline when I was traveling in Europe. Spending money while away from home is like eating dessert off someone else’s plate—somehow it feels like it doesn’t count.
Although this may sound indulgent, even reckless, it actually paid off in spades. The way you express yourself through your clothes is what the fashion industry is all about. A first impression is the only one that counts, and I was determined to make sure mine was a loud, clear statement.
But then, one day, I came to the end of this glamorous near-fantasy. In the year I worked at Barneys, I spent way too much money on clothes, period. And it led nowhere. Unlike many other high-profile fashion jobs, being a fashion director didn’t come with a clothes allowance. In fact, it came with a discount that was even smaller than the one I already got directly from the designers. And yet I was expected to represent the store and the designers it sold through my outfits. A fun challenge? Absolutely! However, it was new territory. As much as I’ve always loved buying and wearing clothes, I’d never paid much attention to what season my clothes were from or how many times I’d worn something as long as the final result felt like “me.” I was also aware of the temptation that would arise being surrounded by the most incredible clothes in the world throughout my day, and I quickly surrendered to the fact that I was going to spend a lot of money at Barneys. I resolved, however, that I was going to do it wisely. I embraced brands like Céline, Derek Lam, Azzedine Alaïa, and The Row that are known for including beautiful classic basics in their collections—clothes that are of designer caliber but don’t scream “look at me!” (okay, maybe Alaïa screams “look at me,” but still, it’s timeless) or get pushed to the back of your closet after just one season. I also discovered less season-specific pieces in the commercial collections of my favorite trendy brands like Proenza Schouler, Thakoon, and Phillip Lim. Despite my investments being wise, all this shopping quickly burned a hole in my wallet, and it just didn’t feel right. I was making more money than I ever had in my life, and what did I have to show for it? While I now have a closet full of beautiful designer clothes that will last decades, if not a lifetime, it took me a year to pay off the debt that resulted from overspending at Barneys. Ouch.
I was so excited to carry this Phillip Lim bag to the shows in Europe. He gave me the very first s
ample so I had it before anyone else, and it went on to become a big hit. The Lanvin shoes were bought with the justification that I was investing in my fashion week comfort.
Mom, with my stepdad, William, in her embroidered velvet Oscar de la Renta jacket, 1980s.
FASHION LESSON NO. 8
HOW TO RECYCLE TRENDS AND MAKE ICONIC PIECES LAST A LIFETIME
WHETHER I am living out of one humbly sized closet (as I am now) or two large walk-in ones (as I did in New York), it’s important that I have a system of managing my clothes. My relationship with clothes is always a cyclical one—sometimes ruled by season, sometimes by trend, sometimes by practicality, but always by attraction. How excited I am by an item of clothing at a given time dictates where it resides within the visual space of my closet, or whether it even deserves a space in my closet at that moment. Twice a year, I reorganize my closet. I pick my favorite or most useful things and arrange them by item. More impactful items like jackets, blouses, and dresses tend to take center stage while trousers and skirts seem to always end up on the periphery. Anything that is blatantly out of season either gets put in moth-proof wicker baskets under the bed or in boxes in the barn until the weather changes again. Brand-new things are always front and center, regardless of the season.
Then there is fashion purgatory. When I come across an item of clothing that I don’t think I’ll wear anytime soon—perhaps I’ve grown tired of it, haven’t worn it as much as I expected to, or wore the hell out of it but it’s a trend that I am ready for a break from—the item gets removed from my closet, and put in a trunk and stored for a longer duration. Three things can happen to an article of clothing that gets put in purgatory. In the first scenario, I’ll suddenly think of a given item because (A) I’ve missed it, (B) I suddenly have a use for it, or (C) it’s become relevant again. In any of those cases I dig it out from its hiding place, it comes back to my closet, and I’m relieved I hadn’t gotten rid of it. The second option happens when I don’t think about an item at all and know that I’m unlikely to ever wear it again, but feel I can’t get rid of it because it means something to me—such as my most important Tuleh pieces, anything by Chanel, anything that belonged to my mother, or maybe just something that I think is iconic or my daughter might like to wear someday. At that stage there are also the items that are ready for a permanent visit to the thrift store, usually things that weren’t too expensive or I just feel are not significant enough to take up space in storage. Those things are banished forever!
Of course, this selection process has resulted in some regrets from time to time. Just the other day I was thinking of my scrunchie collection from the nineties. I was, and still am, 100 percent sure that a scrunchie was never going to make its way onto my head again. But now my thirteen-year-old daughter loves them. When she first asked me for one, I went into shock and wondered out loud if there was a support group for moms whose daughters want to wear a scrunchie. But now I’ve gotten used to the sight of them holding her ponytail up high on her head, and I wish I’d saved mine to pass on to her. I also miss my Marc by Marc Jacobs military-style denim jacket. It would have been so useful to wear on the farm. I guess I wore it until I was so sick of it that I thought I’d never wear it again. But now it seems fresh to me, and I miss it.
I’ve also had great successes in reincarnating items and giving them a second or even third life. One of my most prized fashion possessions is a black velvet Oscar de la Renta jacket with gold embroidery arranged in a baroque pattern all over it. It’s a big statement. It had belonged to my mother in the eighties—I remember she wore it to a New Year’s Eve party in Palm Beach and then again to the opera in New York. When I was old enough to carry it off (my late twenties), my mother handed it down to me, and despite how elaborate and ornate it is, I’ve gotten a lot of use out of it in the last decade. We all think that it’s the simple things that become classic, but sometimes something over the top can be just as consistently chic. I’ve worn that jacket to a Tom Ford dinner, a Christmas-caroling party in Brooklyn, a Carolina Herrera book signing, and another Christmas cocktail party in England. And I’ve worn it with everything from a floor-length silk skirt to ripped jeans and sneakers. In my closet it’s gone from front and center to purgatory and back many times. In fact, once someone from Oscar de la Renta’s design team saw me wearing it in a magazine, and the next day I got a call from Oscar’s office to say that he would love to have that jacket for his archive. They offered me anything I wanted from his store to trade for the jacket. What a dream! I went in so full of promise and excitement, tried on everything, found a few stunning dresses, but in the end I couldn’t commit to the deal. The thing I knew about my jacket was that I had loved it consistently for more than two decades. I had probably worn it once a year for the past six years. It was too hard to know in advance if I was going to love any of these new pieces as much and for as long. Thank God I kept the jacket. I am grateful for its stunning and original design, its longevity in my closet, and the fact that it came from my mother. When it comes to the emotional attachment we all have to clothes, some things are just not replaceable.
Me, with Carolina Herrera at her book launch at Bergdorf Goodman, in the hand-me-down from my mom, 2004.
It’s not just Camilla’s amazing clothes that make her style so coveted; it’s the original way that she wears them.
STYLE INFLUENCE
CAMILLA NICKERSON
IF I HAD to nominate the best-dressed woman in the world, Camilla Nickerson would be my choice. I met her early on in my time in New York (she is an old friend of my husband’s) and then I had the privilege of seeing her at the school run every morning for seven years (where we both had kids). When I tell you that there was not one day that I saw her when her outfit wasn’t perfect and inspiring, I’m not exaggerating. And when I say perfect, I don’t mean perfect as in groomed and polished. I mean perfectly disheveled, or perfectly ironic, or perfectly proportioned. She just has an instinct for combining something classic with something unexpected. She makes you think twice. Once I ran into her at the movies and she was wearing a couture-shaped tweed jacket, flared jeans, black leather hiking boots with electric blue laces, and a Chanel bag. She looked so chic, but casual enough that she didn’t look silly at the movies. No wonder Phoebe Philo (at Céline), Sarah Burton (at Alexander McQueen), and Francisco Costa (at Calvin Klein) all rely on her to style their shows.
At the Chanel book launch for I Love Your Style with my freshly cut hair. Over the course of the week, I’d cut off a foot and I was loving it at this length.
“ALL WOMEN NEED A GOOD DOSE OF HUMILITY FROM TIME TO TIME.”
—DVF
THERE HAVE BEEN three times in my life when I have effectively cut off all my hair. The first was when I was eleven. At that age I had no idea how lucky I was to have long, thick, naturally blond hair. All I cared about was that it had been the same for way too long. Because it was the eighties, I had begged my mom for layers—like, serious eighties-style layers. Uhhhhhhhh, no. She wasn’t having that. Getting wispy bangs was the closest I came to an eighties ’do. Then I wanted to dye my hair, as my older sister had been allowed to do, turning hers a perfect Molly Ringwald pinkish red. “Wait until you’re thirteen” was the response that quashed that ambition. But then I finally got a yes. I was obsessed with the movie Some Kind of Wonderful, and I decided I wanted to look just like Mary Stuart Masterson’s character in the movie. It was a boy’s haircut, in effect, but it was blond enough and just long enough in the front to maintain some femininity. So in I went to Studio One—our local hip (in a suburban kinda way) hairdresser—and showed the lady a picture of the look I was going for.
My best friend’s mother, Viveka, was the only one who was honest with me about my new look. “Darling, what have you done? Your hair looks horrible!” I guess I’d known it did, but I wasn’t able to admit it to myself until that moment. When the lady had cut off my hair, all the years of natural blond highlights
went with it and the result was a poor man’s version of “Watts’s” look—a mousy brown mop of hair that was way too thick for such a short cut. But still, I was young enough to not really care about how I looked, and I was still feeling the triumph of convincing my mom to let me do something radical.
It took two years of awkward in-between styles to grow my hair back to its normal length, and once I could recognize myself again, I would keep it that way—falling just below my boobs—all through high school and college. Around the time of my graduation from Brown, my mom said to me one day, “Sweetheart, I think it’s time you cut your hair shorter. Such long hair is really more becoming on very young girls.” “You’re right,” I said, without much thought. “I should.”
Weeks later, when I returned to my usual summer job working for Patrick Demarchelier, I had a new look. Once again I had cut my long, bohemian, wavy hair, but this time into a neat, shoulder-length bob. Again, I wasn’t too sure about the result—I was worried I looked like a soccer mom—and my doubts were confirmed when Patrick caught a glimpse of my new look and said in his very heavy French accent, “What deed you do vis your ’air, darling?” He then called over Patrick Melville, the on-set hairdresser, and said, “Do somesing vis her ’air.” So Patrick M. started cutting, in BIG chunks. I don’t know what came over me. I just let it happen. Did I not care? Did I not have the confidence to ask him what he was doing before he started cutting? Before I had a conscious thought, I had a Jean Seberg pixie cut. I was numb the rest of the day. I went home that night and cried and cried. My mom cried with me, and my always loving and supportive stepdad couldn’t help but comment that I looked like a cancer patient. I think he was upset because I was so upset. I knew it was just a haircut, but it was traumatic, and it zapped my already fragile just-out-of-college self-esteem.
Always Pack a Party Dress: And Other Lessons Learned From a (Half) Life in Fashion Page 15