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

by Amanda Brooks

Overview

Author of the bestselling I Love Your Style Amanda Brooks shares her personal stories, and sartorial highs and lows, from a life in fashion, with beautiful, eclectic, and inspired photographs throughout.

An authentic voice in the world of style and how-to books, Amanda Brooks, with her unique and enviable yet accessible style, has inspired thousands of women of all ages to find their own personal look and explore their identity through the clothes they love to wear.

In the past twenty years, Brooks has worked as a photo assistant for Patrick Demarchelier, a “gallerina” at the Gagosian Gallery, and at various fashion posts, before finding her dream job as fashion director for Barneys New York. Along the way—and wearing more than a few of the kinds of outfits we’ve all regretted at one point or another—Brooks has discovered the key to creating her personal style, combining influences as wide-ranging as childhood prep school, Grateful Dead concerts, contemporary artists, pop culture, and her current home outside of the fashion bubble, a farm where she lives with her family (and a host of animals) in England.

Brooks recalls her early career aspirations and explores the evolution of her own personal style in stories of successes and failures alike, and offers fashion and beauty tips and inspiring photographs throughout. Always Pack a Party Dress is a must-read for high fashion or street style aficionados. In this gorgeously produced gift book, Brooks shares her expertise and insider view with warm, candid, and witty prose.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780399170836
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/26/2015
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Amanda Brooks is the author of I Love Your Style: How to Define and Refine Your Personal Style and Always Pack a Party Dress: And Other Lessons Learned From a (Half) Life in Fashion. She has written for the T: The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, and Men's Vogue, where she wrote the popular online column "In Her Eyes." The former fashion director of Barney’s New York and creative director of Tuleh, she has appeared as a fashion expert on Today, The Early Show, and NPR. She lives with her husband and their two children in Oxfordshire, England.

Table of Contents

Introduction 17

Fashion Lesson No. 1: That's So You! 31

Fashion Lesson No. 2: Embrace Your History 32

Where I'm Coming From 35

Style Influence: My Mother 40

Style Influence: My Teenage Years: Boarding School, The Adirondacks, The Grateful Dead, and J. Crew 43

Always Pack a Party Dress 47

Style Influence: Palm Beach 62

A Long Walk is the Best Way to Clear Your Head 67

How Commitment to the Man of Mydreams Set Me Free to be a Fashion Chameleon 79

Style influence: Christian Louboutin 90

Style Influence: Isabella Blow 95

Take the Thing You Most Love to Do on Weekends and Turn That Into Your Career 97

Fashion Lesson No. 3: Bells and Whistles 102

Style Influence: Tracee Ellis Ross 105

Sidebar: Informational Interviews 106

When a Rock Star Asks for Your Phone Number, He Doesn't Just Want to Be Your Friend 109

Style Influence: Lauren Hutton 117

Try Anything That Grabs Your Attention-You Gotta Start Somewhere! 119

Style Influence: Sofia Coppola 129

Style Influence: Amy Astley 130

Mistakes Are Okay, as Long as You Learn From Them 133

Fashion Lesson No. 4: Packing Fashion 137

Fashion Lesson No. 5: The Brilliance of White Shoes 140

Fake It 'Til You Make It 143

Fashion Lesson No. 6: Learn How to Smile for a Photo (It Took Me Fifteen Years!) 152

Style Influence: David Hicks 154

Sidebar: Thoughts on Taste 156

The Met Ball Can Induce the Highest Highs (A "Wow" From Anna Wintour) and the Lowest Lows (Arriving in a Beat-Up Minivan) 159

Fashion Lesson No. 7: Matching My Lips to My Nails 183

Style Influence: Duro Olowu 184

Style Influence: Molly Milbank 186

When You Art Stuck, Ask Someone You Admire What They See for You 189

Sidebar: Rules for Consulting 198

I Have Always Spent Too Much Money On Clothes … and it has Always Been Worth It (Until It Wasn't) 203

Fashion Lesson No. 8: How to Recycle Trends and Make Iconic Pieces Lust a Lifetime 208

Style Influence: Camilla Nickerson 212

"All Women Need a Good Dose of Humility From Time to Time." -DVF 215

Fashion Lesson No. 9: Hair and Makeup Know-How 231

Rejection is a Mandatory Rest Stop Along the Road to Success 235

Fashion Lesson No. 10: The "Coat Over Your Shoulders" Look 241

Fashion Lesson No. 11: Mixing Denim 242

Style Influence: Updated Classic 245

Of All the Places in the World to Fall Apart, I Neverthought It Would Happen in Paris 247

Style Influence: Céline 265

Fashion Lesson No. 12: What Was I Thinking? 268

Sometimes You Just Have to Start from Scratch 271

Sidebar: Self-Nourishing 280

Style Influence: My Artist Friends 282

A Year on the Farm: Making Jam is the Best Revenge 285

Sidebar: My Greatest Hits 294

Acknowledgments 301

Image Credits 303

Editorial Reviews

Amanda Brooks is one of those rare birds—perfectly imperfect, not overly considered, impossibly real and humble. While flipping through the pages of this book, I realized her style is just that: her style.”—Jenna Lyons

“Amanda Brooks is innately chic. Her new book is as smart and original as she is.” —Tory Burch

“Amanda Brooks is one of the best-dressed women I know, and she maintains a wonderful sense of humor about style. She understands the ins and outs of the fashion and the industry, yet doesn’t let them dictate who she is. She’s inspiring and unique, and I’m so happy that she shares what she’s learned in this book!”—Garance Doré

“For young women who want to work in the world of fashion and beauty, or anyone who simply just loves it, Amanda’s book is the dream-come-true told with sweetness and honesty.”—Delia Ephron

“From the pages of Vogue to the front rows of Paris to her current country-girl home in rural England, Amanda Brooks’s exciting life has encompassed the full sartorial spectrum. In Always Pack a Party Dress, clothes become the outer reflection of the private inner world, and her wise and practical meditations on style are really metaphors for how to live authentically and well.”—Amy Astley

“As someone who knows all too well the adrenaline-charged fashion scene from New York to Paris and beyond, as well as the simple joys of home and family life, I relished every page of Always Pack a Party Dress. Amanda beautifully untangles and analyzes all aspects of her twenty years in fashion, an act as thoughtful and generous as it is inspiring.”—Laura Bailey

“Amanda Brooks is the true American glamour girl! In her must-read book she offers candid style and career advice and, just as important, shows readers that a sense of humor and self-discovery is much more gratifying than striving for perfection.”—Diane von Furstenberg

“A fashion maven shares her secrets….[readers] will find much useful advice in this bright and breezy confection….Filled with tips on hair, makeup, nails, lips, shopping, packing, and smiling for photographs, this book will thrill readers for whom Christian Louboutin is a household god."—Kirkus

“[T]his colorful, savvy volume covers material from why women should always know how to do their own hair to how to set up a consulting business.”—Women's Wear Daily

From the Publisher

2015-03-11
A fashion maven shares her secrets. In 1995, former Barneys New York fashion director Brooks (I Love Your Style, 2009) was in Miami, working as a photographer's intern, when Madonna invited the whole photography team to her 35th birthday party. The young fashionista had not packed a single party dress, causing her to scurry around South Beach in search of something suitably amazing. In the end, she wound up wearing her own floral slip dress, pretty, but not "remotely cool." Readers with similar problems—lunch with Mick Jagger, gallery openings with Plum Sykes, sudden invitations to the splendiferous Met Ball—will find much useful advice in this bright and breezy confection. Brooks has been swept up in fashion since childhood (she grew up shopping in Palm Beach), and although she picks up a Chanel this and a Lauren that at flea markets and vintage shops, she also inherited couture from her stylish mother and aunt. She counts among her fashion influences Patricia Herrera (daughter of designer Carolina), her college roommate at Brown; Diane von Furstenberg, whose son she dated; Brown classmate Tracee Ellis Ross, Diana's daughter; Sofia Coppola, her "favorite of all style setters"; and model Lauren Hutton. At 22, Brooks was a gallerina, "one of the well-raised, polite girls pretty enough to charm billionaires into buying art at blue-chip galleries," when she decided she'd had enough of owner Gagosian's tantrums. After she quit, a friend advised, "take the thing you like to do most on the weekends and turn it into your career." That happy pastime was buying vintage handbags at flea markets, so she decided to become a handbag designer, which she parlayed into a job as creative director for Frederic Fekkai, which led to her stint at Barneys. Filled with tips on hair, makeup, nails, lips, shopping, packing, and smiling for photographs, this book will thrill readers for whom Christian Louboutin is a household god.

Kirkus Reviews

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