Amanda Brooks says one woman's blog about country living is what inspired her take a break from working in fashion — but her friends in the industry say they have no doubt she'll be back in the game soon.
Brooks recently told The New York Times that Ree Drummond's blog The Pioneer Woman — which details Drummond's life on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma — gave her the idea to give up her job as fashion director at Barneys last March to take a yearlong sabbatical from life in New York City. "It's the idea of having a career on your own terms, anywhere," said Brooks, who's moving with her family to England for a year. While she's there she'll blog and work on a new book.
Perhaps Brooks's quest for life on her own terms started two years ago, when Diane von Furstenberg wrote the foreward for Brooks's book I Love Your Style, the designer told her, "It's time for you to figure out who is Amanda Brooks. Not Amanda Brooks who works for so-and-so. It’s time to define yourself as a woman." Below, some of Brooks's friends comment on how she's defined herself so far.
Diane von Furstenberg: "When I met her, she was very kind of WASPy and I didn't even think she was that pretty. But I loved watching her grow. She learns, she absorbs, she’s very entrepreneurial and she’s very nice."
Mark Dowley, Brooks's former boss at William Morris Endeavor: "Amanda is a complete person. Because she's so pulled together, she's incredibly disarming, but that can also be very intimidating."
Amy Astley, editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue: "She's a jock. She's the girl who is swimming in the sound in April. She's not a prissy fashion girl at all."
Artist Rachel Feinstein: "Amanda is fearless. If she decides to do something, she isn't worried about what people might think. . . She's incredibly genuine. It's hard for people to realize that someone like her is actually how she is. People want to dislike her because they can’t believe she’s had all this."
>> Contrary to popular opinion, Amy Astley says, she didn't work under Anna Wintour when she was editor at House & Garden (HG, as it was called then). In fact, she only met Wintour the day the magazine was shuttered: "So I get the call the day HG closed, would I go and see Anna, and I said sure, of course . . . and they were like, ‘Today, right now.’ And that’s how I learned how Vogue operates — I was like, ‘Can I do it tomorrow? I have to get my outfit together!’ And HR was like, ‘No, she’s ready for you now, right now.’ So I toddled up there in my little Agnes B. T-shirt and my brand new Chanel ballet slippers that cost, like, a week’s salary." She was hired as beauty associate at Vogue and promoted soon after to beauty director: "I stayed at Vogue for nine years — I did four test issues of Teen Vogue, I edited Index — and I didn’t think Conde Nast was going to launch Teen Vogue, so I got pregnant for the second time, and Anna and Mr. [Si] Newhouse called me in. I was nine days away from giving birth — I was so fat. I had gained, like, forty pounds . . . I was huge! And they said, ‘We’re going to launch Teen Vogue, and we want you to edit it.’ I literally gave birth to my second child Ingrid as the magazine was being launched, so she and it are the same age — eight. I was 35 at the time." [
>> Erin Kaplan, Elle's PR director who played foil to Olivia Palermo on the now-cancelled The City, sent an email out to contacts earlier today that she is leaving the magazine for Teen Vogue. Kaplan spent over five years at Elle and has been named Teen Vogue's Senior Director of PR. Since editor Amy Astley hinted last year that Teen Vogue is developing a new TV show, many are drawing the conclusion that Kaplan's jump — given her TV experience — may be related. [
>> Teen Vogue Working on New TV Show — Teen Vogue ducked out of their The Hills partnership more than a couple of seasons ago, but from what Amy Astley told FIDM students in Los Angeles Monday, it sounds like magazine isn't done with television — they're working on a new show. No further details were given, but it sounds like the show won't center around Amy — she also noted during the talk that she didn't appear often on The Hills because “I don’t want to be a media personality. I’ve seen people laughed off Madison Avenue for taking the reality star route, it can really backfire." [
Fun. Funky. Fashion. All words that come to mind when I think of the beloved 
>> THE MODELIZER —Late last week, it floated around that Kate Moss's room party at the Ritz Paris during Fashion Week got so boisterous, a neighboring editor had to switch rooms in the middle of the night, and management had to apologize to guests on her behalf the following morning. Now we know who the unlucky editor was: Teen Vogue editor-in-chief Amy Astley. [