Brooks - Always pack a party dress: and other lessons learned from a (half) life in fashion

SITTING HERE at the kitchen table in our farmhouse, dressed in jodhpurs and muddy boots, just in from a morning ride, I am trying to remind myself how and why I decided to write this book. Its been three years since I took a break from my twenty-year career in fashion to spend a yearlong creative sabbatical at my husbands family farm in the English countryside. Yes, were still here. And while I have many ideas about what my professional future might hold, many of which include fashion, its hard to imagine making anywhere else my home.

But back to where this book began. The very first idea came to me as do many of my ideas: at the end of a long walk. It was early 2010, and I was in Manhattan, walking from my Lower East Side apartment to pick up my kids from school in Greenwich Village. I was reflecting on the positive feedback I had received after writing on my blog about cutting off all my hair at age twenty-two. The anecdote included typical coming-of-age optimism, a large dose of humility, some fabulous fashion-world people, my parents, and some pretty heavy questioning of who I was and why people liked me.

I liked writing the story and the similar ones that followed. I liked putting a human face on the glamour and exclusivity of the fashion world. I liked writing in order to revisit the moments, the people, the experiences that had shaped me throughout my time in the fashion industry. I liked recognizing that in many ways, the fashion world has escorted me from an intern in my teenage years, to accessories designer as a young adult, to creative director as I became a wife, to fashion director as I discovered my role as a mother, and eventually to who I am today.

At the time, these thoughts werent a book. They were a direction for my blog, which fell to the side pretty soon after, when I accepted a job as Barneys fashion director and agreed to set aside my personal work and social media pursuits. But as my time in that role came to an end, I started thinking about writing a follow-up book to I Love Your Style and wondered what that might be. When I first wrote that book, it had felt like the first in a seriesI Love Your [Kids, Wedding, Home, Mens] Style could easily follow. But now that the idea of collaging well-researched photos from every decade has been adapted by Pinterest and Tumblr, I realized the intrigue of that format, for me at least, had come and gone. Friends in the publishing industry agreed, and there I was, left to start from scratch.

A couple of months before I left Barneys, I revisited the idea of writing down these stories about coming of age in the fashion industry. It was important to me that I had something to work on next. I couldnt wait to get back to writing. As damn hard as it is at times, I thrive on the singular creative perspective, the flexible hours, and the processing of ideas, thoughts, and emotions that writing provides. So I called a friend who was an editor at a publishing house I admired and ran some ideas by her. None of them particularly resonated with her. As I was listening to her feedback, I remembered the personal fashion stories I had so enjoyed writing for my blog, and suggested that perhaps they could be compiled into a book. Without hesitation, she told me this was my next project.

My compulsively tidy office at the farm. Christopher gave me the rosewood desk as a present when we moved here, and the antlers came from stags shot by Christophers aunt Anne Brooks, as did the metal box behind my desk. Lucky for me we share the same initials. On the wall are invitations to Hugo Guinnesss shows at John Derian. I collect them.

My office is in an old garden shed, so the wood burner is key to making it cozy. I bought the leopard stool at a local antiques shop for $150.

It wouldnt be until nine months later that I sat down to start writing. After moving my family across the Atlantic, settling the kids into our home and a new school, and setting up life (Wi-Fi!) on a remote farm, I couldnt have felt further from fashion. My days were spent taking photographs, doing the school run, cooking family meals, riding horses, making jam, and updating what had been our summer house for year-round living. I was in full decompression-from-New-York mode and was giving myself permission to follow my bliss. It was hard to want to think about fashion and all that I had purposely taken a break from, and I started to doubt my new book idea, which had once seemed so promising. But there is something exhilarating and empowering about going in the direction of my fear, in the direction of the thing that seems hard, and so I slowly began to write more about my experience in fashion. It was over the winter, as the stories continued and evolved, that I began to realize how important and integral this reflection on my time in the industry was to seeing clearly and understanding how I had gonefor the time beingfrom an NYC girl devoted to her career to a stay-at-home mom on a farm in the middle of nowhere. It has shown me how everything I have done so far in my life has led to new challenges, to deep happiness, to the chance to take everything I have learned and accomplished and apply that to whatever it is I decide to do next.