Leandra Medine's Blog, page 599

Dispatch from Paris: Louis Vuitton

What determines how we feel about a show? Is it the immediate feeling that we want to own it, or is it something more intrinsic than that — a case of emotional resonance? If you’re Nicolas Ghesquière, it is often both.

His work at Louis Vuitton indicates that he designs from the gut. I guess his work at Balenciaga did that, too. And that gut feels a lot like an emotional roller coaster — you think you’re getting one thing but you end up with something different. There’s this sense of uniformity that is so difficult to pinpoint. It’s like you’re on your way to a party and you see a group of girls across the street. Given their demeanor, you just know that they’re going to the same party. They don’t look like each other, they don’t really sound like each other — you might decide that you hate them, but there’s an understanding between that cohort and you that you’re all the same. In a way, you’re bound. That’s what Louis Vuitton under the Ghesquière reign does — it binds us.

On Wednesday morning, the Fondation Louis Vuitton was covered in screens. These screens projected cuts from a popular video game called Minecraft. From behind the screens emerged models. We could only see them from the torso down and I swear to blog every time an entire outfit was revealed, I was surprised. It seemingly started as a futuristic, digitally-ept take on punk. There were clunky shoes and jumpsuits and rock and roll jackets and skirts — both leather and studded. There were slingback loafers which I know aren’t new but feel so satisfying, like a can of Diet Coke after 8 years of abstinence.

And then slowly, a different vision under the same establishment sauntered in. Victorian collars and elaborate sleeves and low rise flight pants, embellished cropped cape tops and this series of hideously marvelous bubble skirts and dresses rendered in white and metallic silver. There were shrugs and pieces of fringe hanging from open knits. Every girl wore a set of what looked like leather hand casts — a new take on motorcycle gloves, no doubt.

Descriptively, they have nothing to do with each other, right? But watch the collection — you’ll see that they’re all from the same video game.

We’re spending a lot of time talking about what it means that Balenciaga is now two for two with the tapping of young designers who are known for their contemporary appeal. We fear old house tradition falling by the wayside and what it means that couture, a relic of the past, will now truly become of a bygone era. Maybe they were hoping they’d find a new Ghesquière: a real artifact of the future. Nothing less.

Photographs via Vogue Runway; Feature collage by Elizabeth Tamkin

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Okay, but What Was Leandra Really Doing in Paris?

A fun thing that I have access to is Leandra’s daily calendar. This is pretty boring because mostly, Leandra and I do the same things. Or it says “meetings.” The majority of it is meetings. One time it just said “Instagram” so I checked Instagram and there it was, right on schedule — an Instagram. So actually, her daily calendar is a great way to cure insomnia.

…Except when she’s in Paris for Fashion Week. Then I stalk her. It helps me plan my own day here back at Camp Anawanna but also, it lets me live vicariously, just like every 90s kid did while waiting for his or her turn on the remote controller during Super Mario Bros. But it’s especially entertaining when I look at Leandra’s schedule in the same way I did my SATs, which is to say: completely make shit up.

So I did just that on a Monday for her Tuesday life.

***

According to her cal, Leandra’s Tuesday will begin at 10:30 AM — Chanel show. After that, Valentino, 2:30 PM. Strange gap of time there. Hmm. Interesting. At 3:45, an Aurélie Bidermann appointment. Following that: the Paul & Joe show at 6:30 (a suspicious gap in time), then “cocktails” until 8:00 (ok, Samantha Jones), dinner with N. Josse post-“cocktail,” all chased with three separate parties that there is no shot in a can of tuna she will be able to make, unless she splits herself into multiple people, and three Leandras is my actual nightmare…so here’s how this is really gonna go down:

6:00 AM: Leandra wakes up because she is a farmer.

6:02 AM: Cock-a-doodle-what, Leandra challenges a Parisian rooster.

~*boring stuff here where Leandra types up reviews and emails and shit*~

9:00 AM: A what-do-I-wear frenzy where Leandra tries on 1234 outfits despite the fact that I know for a fact she only packed two and failed to include pajamas, a toothbrush or underwear.

9:00.133 AM: She is getting all of these outfits from the room next door. I think Leandra has a bit of a sticky finger this trip.

10:00 AM: Leandra is now toying dangerously close with being real-life-late but because this is Fashion Week she’s running on runway time, which means a quick break to call her mom.

“Hi mom! It’s so funny that my hotel room looks like the Plaza but it’s because we’re in Amelia’s brain right now and she’s been watching way too much Gossip Girl so she assumes every European hotel room looks like the Plaza, even though the Plaza’s in New York.”

10:45 AM: Leandra’s butt is planted firmly in her seat at Chanel. She gets yelled at by the photographer pit for crossing her legs (a big faux pas because it ruins the runway photos) . Then she gets yelled for uncrossing them, I’d assume because of the whole no underwear thing.

11:30 AM: The show is done, Leandra’s out. Remember that weird amount of time to kill?

Boom. Falafel city, aka Le Marais, aka the only neighborhood she took me to visit that one time I allegedly “followed her” to Paris.

1:30 PM: Pedicure time. If I were Leandra in Paris with a break, I’d YOLO all over the damn town. Also I bet their Essie colors are cooler over there.

2:30 PM: Valentino. She is seated next to Derek Zoolander and Hansel.

3:45 PM: Aurelie appointment, which we all know is ACTUALLY a shopping trip. A big, tassely shopping trip of the non-nipple variety.

Suspicious gap here? It’s called a nap.

6:30 PM: Paul & Joe show as planned, I am not fully insane. However, there is no shot she didn’t sneak a piece of smoked salmon in because that seems to be her snack of choice as of late.

7:30 PM: Climbs tree in the Tuileries in the name of performance art. Gets stuck. Has to call firepeople to come save her.

(See agenda from 6:30 – 7:30. She’s a cat, I knew it.)

8:00 PM: She miraculously makes her cocktails date on time (9 lives!) but it’s not with “N. Josse” as her calendar promised. That was Leandra trying to throw me off her scent. Josse = Jose Canseco, former Major League Baseball outfielder. She’s totally getting a coffee-and-a-cosmo with Canseco.

You know. As one does in Paris. Looks like all three of us knocked the ball out of the park, eh?

I know, I know.  I’m fired.

The post Okay, but What Was Leandra Really Doing in Paris? appeared first on Man Repeller.

Kelis Makes the Case for Mayo, Not Milkshakes

More fridge summaries right here!

Get all of the milkshake jokes you need to make out of the way now. If nothing else, you should know that you can’t keep a milkshake in the fridge without it going bad.

You should also know that Kelis, the Harlem-raised, LA-based singer/songwriter of more than just that famous song, also happens to be a classically-trained chef who studied at Le Cordon Bleu. She started her own sauce company, Bounty & Full, because she couldn’t get jerk sauce in LA, has two fridges at home: one for the family, one used exclusively for recipe testing and pregnancy cravings, and she recently published a cook book titled, “My Life on a Plate: Recipes from Around the World.”

…So I guess the question becomes even more pressing. What does Kelis keep in her fridge? (The secret one, that is.) Lauren Levinger of The Food Life investigates:

1. Jell-O

“I don’t have a ton [of pregnancy cravings], but I do have some. Right now it’s Jell-O, which is a weird thing. I hate the green and orange — it’s about the red. I tried the natural brands, but they were gross. I want J-E-L-L-O.”

2. Heirloom Tomatoes 

“I have also been on a tomato craze. Our neighbor grows heirloom tomatoes, so we do trade offs of sauce and tomatoes. It’s a really great relationship. I made a tomato mango salsa which is tucked in there because the season for Heirlooms is coming to an end. ”

3. Calendrical Beer

I am part of a beer of the month club. I haven’t been able to drink, but usually my husband will save me one and drink the other.

4. Two Kinds of Cream Cheese: Blueberry and Jalepeño

“There is a really great New York-style bagel place not far from here and they have jalepeño and sun dried tomato bagels. I like a flavor. I love an everything bagel as well. I don’t ever want a plain one, that’s a waste of time!”

5. The Reddi-wip

“I have been cutting corners lately, I would usually make my own. I had a little gathering here and I made these pineapple sponge cake things, and I just felt like this was easier.”

6. Lots and Lots of Oranges

“I love orange juice — we squeeze fresh orange juice everyday.”

7. Arm and Hammer

To keep it fresh.

8. The “Basics”

“In my cookbook, I talk about what kitchen staples are. I don’t think cooking should be a burden. I’m not one of those people who has time to go to the grocery store every time I cook; you go once a week — but you want to get all your basics.

For me, the basics are onions, garlic and peppers. That’s my mirepoix. I also always have heavy cream, ghi and milk. There is usually mayonnaise in there because you can do a lot with mayo. If I’m running out of eggs, you can supplement it with mayonnaise. In the pantry, we will always have sugar, flour and buttermilk. I feel like all of these things are like bridges. They link one thing to another; it’s always good to have.”

Follow Kelis on Instagram and Twitter and order her cookbook here.

Images by Lauren Levinger of The Food Life. 

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A Day in the Life During Paris Fashion Week

It is 9:29 a.m. and I have just spent the greater half of the hour-and-change that I have been awake sending photos to Elizabeth, which has no doubt eaten like $100 worth of data so please, for the love of me and the hate of AT&T, engage! This is supposed to depict a single day in the life during Paris Fashion Week but much like in New York, if you’ve done it enough times it starts to feel eerily like Groundhog Day. So why not instead call this an amalgam of days in the life during fashion week — some of which include the superstar man-behind-the-spam, Abie “partner in sex” Cohen, who is practically the mother of a stage-five clinger dropping off said clinger at camp to settle her/make sure she doesn’t dive off the deep end (jump off the Arc in this case). Bear with me.

It is now 9:34 a.m., above is what happened since we last spoke. Abie left on Sunday by literally dropping the mic (as in, buying a pair of Saint Laurent sneakers, noting through the lens of his efficiently and financially wired brain that the price difference abroad results in exactly a 28% discount and then bowing out). While he was packing, I went to an appointment about three blocks away from my hotel to see Peter Pilotto and his Spring collection (shown in London). Immediately following, I was supposed to meet Shiona Turini, who you might remember from that time I tried to look sexy (but invariably failed), who asked me to take a picture in a pair of Dior pumps for a project she is working on, to which I was like, “duh.” Because I was running late and Abie was waiting for his cab and she was talking shit about me, he turned on his locater and said, “Hey, Shiona, I’m tracking Leandra, she’s like twenty feet away.”

If you were waiting for someone and an unidentified man chimed it to confirm to you that you need not worry because according to the chip he installed in the tardy’s ass, she is really not far, how would you feel? Probably kind of violated. Anyway, I finally made it, gave Abie a good lick on the cheek and then went to shoot some pumps with Shiona.

This was immediately followed by a show in Saint-Germain-des-Prés by Maison Rabih Kayrouz, who is arguably the most adorable and grateful fashion designer I’ve seen take a post-show bow + sob. He did this cool thing wherein models in long pants had lace up sandals laced up their pants to make them look like flare legs.

Anyway, then I went to see Gaia Repossi at her showroom. I tried on some very dramatic, very decadent jewelry and then ordered a new wedding band, which is truly counter-intuitive given those are supposed to come from your partners on the day of your wedding but you know, whatever works. I think there is some value in calling a spade a spade here, making like Carrie B. and proclaiming that the most important relationship you have is the one you have with yourself. Wedding bands for all.

But I digress.

There was also a Sonia Rykiel show and an Esteban Cortazar one. Both held on the left side of this city, both featuring shit loads of sparkle. We got !free! sweaters at Rykiel and a look at one insanely cool lamé high-low knit at Cortazar. According to my health app, I walked 20,000 steps this day. Victory. To finish off the walk, I crossed the bridge to head back to my hotel where, with an hour to spare, I grabbed my laptop, thought about coming downstairs, changed my mind and remained nestled in my duplex bedroom (yes! Duplex!) wearing a pair of brocade baggy pants and a white blouse. I wrote until Claire Distenfeld, who is staying in the same hotel called, said “Ready,” and then we went to the Bristol, where Mira Duma was hosting this badass Russian/Ukrainian designers event. I saw Vita Kin of amazing peasant dress fame and this new designer called Litkovskaya, which I am really into.

We stayed for exactly 58 minutes (Claire is a sargent general) and then took a taxi to Hotel Costes where we met Rosie Assoulin, who had just landed and ate so much salmon. There was also CHOKLIT CAYKE! See what I mean about Groundhog Day? We talked about life and love and the Céline show and what it meant that there was no life or love at the latter.

Then I fast forwarded about 36 hours to this very moment, where I sit in a breakfast room, texting Rosie and Claire about last night’s Saint Laurent fiasco, scrolling through Instagram in another tab currently open on my browser watching as what seems like the whole of humanity Instagrams the Chanel show invite. It’s airplane themed, so we’ll see what terminal that means we land in very, very soon.

Runway images via Vogue Runway; f eature collage by Elizabeth Tamkin

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Will the Vetements Designer Take Care of Balenciaga?

Balenciaga has a new artistic director. WWD confirmed a rumor that has been running rampant in Paris this week — Demna Gvasalia of Vetements (the four-season old fashion collective chiefly designed by the Georgian visionary and his brother, making a profound impact on the public fashion discourse with their deconstructed-reconstructed easy urban wear) will take over where Alexander Wang left some of the most stunning white dresses from his time at Balenciaga. Gvasalia will show his first collection for the house in March.

The French front row (a hierarchy monopolized by the old guard) is seemingly frustrated by the appointment, ostensibly as a result of the designer’s experience. Vetements is a house that is only two years old, but Gvasalia worked for three and a half years at Maison Martin Margiela followed by a stint at Louis Vuitton during Marc Jacobs’ tenure, as well. Still, the question is: will he honor the late Cristóbal Balenciaga — a relic of couture past?

If the previous work of Gvasalia serves as an indication of his skill, Balenciaga fans need not worry. The designer, though arguably “green,” is technically very talented. He has tuned into a frequency permeating the breaking waves of fashion with his artisanal denim, extra-long sleeve coats and the mid length throw-it-on-and-never-think-about-it-again dresses which served as the unofficial uniform of the recently departed fashion month (the proof is in the slideshow).

But here’s my question: does it really matter if he can flash his couture chips? Do we live in a world where couture is still — I mean, really — important? Of course, the way in which the French interact with fashion is profoundly different from the way we do stateside. It is regarded as a blatant necessity in France. We see it as a frivolous hobby.

I’m not sure where along the way we forgot that we don’t need clothes solely to prevent public nudity, but I am confident that we are learning that fashion — the clothes we elect to speak for us where words just don’t work — is a window into, yes, our souls, but perhaps more importantly, our minds. And the mindset says this: make me feel good, and make me feel cool. Give me something I will want to wear while I attempt to balance the million and one hats I wear in the course of a day. There is an energy about the clothes of Vetements. An attitude that you want to buy into. And damn do the clothes fit! They’re not just jeans and dresses or sweaters. They’re The Jeans. (And The Dresses, and The Sweaters.)

It is true that couture is beautiful, that it is glamorous and stands for fashion’s old guard — when events were planned so that you had somewhere to wear the clothes. But it’s just not the world we occupy today. And that’s okay! Maybe we’re more concerned with experience these days. And doesn’t that make the clothes you wear that much more fulfilling?

Personally, I’m quite excited. But what do you think?

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Dispatch from Paris: Chanel and Valentino

The only talking point more salient than the Chanel terminal that was set up at the Grand Palais yesterday to celebrate the house’s SS16 collection was the controversy that circumscribed Valentino’s later show at the Tuilerie Gardens.

But first thing’s first: it will be impossible to get through security in the chunky necklace chokers worn on nearly every model at Chanel.

Many of the slim pants on display (all wearable, all viable) were styled with sheer dresses over them. There were loads of sweaters and shirts worn around the waist. (Fabric cummerbunds, here we come!) The wheeled bags seem to indicate that luggage is the new handbag (Chanel make, monkey see, money do) and there is something very charming about a pair of Birkenstocks (they countered the silver/plexi flatform booties) produced almost a full year following the purported end of the trend. And! They were light up. Light up!

Also important: the patriotic pairing of red, white and blue is starting to feel like the freshest dressing color combination. More on that in another story.

Now, as for Valentino. It took the first look walking synchronously to drums and its following corn-rowed, largely white model army to recognize that the show would become an important talking point for the conversation of cultural appropriation in fashion. I find it difficult to weigh in given my respect for the creative directors, Pierpaolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri. They are thoughtful masters of their craft, phenomenal designers who can execute a vision with the kind of precision you see only in prodigies. And their intentions (which are not everything, but are important) are not bad. I am sure of this.

VogueRunway.com’s Sarah Mower wrote that at the forefront of the designers’ minds while creating this collection were the refugees fleeing from Senegal, Nigeria, Eritrea, Mali and Gambia to Italy, and the backlash they’ve received upon seeking cover. Piccioli and Chiuri wanted to blend their cultures with that of Italy’s — the designers’ way of welcoming these people, an opening up of arms. In addition to citing the research and education that went into the duo’s collection, Mower quoted Chiuri: “We probably feel that the greatest privilege in doing our work is that fashion can give a message.”

“The message is tolerance,” Piccioli added. “And the beauty that comes out of cross-cultural expression.”

The problem is that the message was not heard loudly nor clearly enough. I think they hoped the collection would have been regarded as cultural celebration as opposed to appropriation. But of course, there is also the question of what constitutes appropriation: When you take, you’ve also have to give. Will the house work with African artisans on the creation of this season’s textiles? Will funds go to refugee relief efforts? Most immediately problematic to the audience: employing less than a single percentage point of black models through the duration of an entire, 83-look show isn’t “giving.” And that issue is much more dense than just this instance, too. If there aren’t as many working black models as there are white ones in general — and that’s a function of white privilege, how could a considerably larger number have been cast? That’s not an answer, that’s not a defense — it’s just a question.

Amid the media storm that rained on a show that had been articulately produced to evince the spirit of a culture that deserves celebration and visibility in its manifold permutations (following the show, the crowd was buzzing. “This was reason enough to come to Paris,” I heard someone say; another admitted that he’d been falling asleep all week until the show), what bothered me was that in all the call-out of purported racism on display at Valentino, not a single opinion suggested a solution.

Until we start putting actionable change into place, who cares?

So instead of sitting here and lambasting the designers for what seemed like ignorance, or naïveté, let’s talk about how to set the change in motion. This is our time, right? It’s our era, so we can do one of two things: continue to shout through our respective brain dead megaphones, or prove the millennial naysayers wrong and put our actions where our keyboards are.

Here’s one to get you started that a writer named Erika Butler wrote to me: if your collection is a celebration of African culture, close the show with black women.

Photographs via Vogue Runway; f eature collage by Elizabeth Tamkin

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Oh Boy Podcast Episode 7: Kiran Gandhi

Kiran Gandhi has been shaking shit up since she was a child. At age three she pissed off her best friends — two boys — for showing up to a Halloween playdate dressed as the Red Ranger. They were mad at her for not choosing the Pink Ranger, but Gandhi knew: the Red Ranger ran the show.

From that moment on, she hasn’t stopped running the show. Gandhi completed the April 2015 London Marathon on her period without a tampon to break the stigma of menstruation and bring awareness to the reality that not all women have access to the kinds of feminine products many of us take for granted. During college, rather than apply for an internship at the White House per her parents’ wish, she focused on her music career because it’s what made her feel most complete. (Listen to her description of what it was like discovering the D.C. music scene — you will immediately want what she’s having.) And it payed off: she then went on to play drums for MIA and Thievery Corporation.

Thanks to a unique upbringing that encouraged activism and helped her develop a strong, personal hold of feminism, Kiran Gandhi has always believed in the younger generation’s ability to change the world. “The time is now,” she told Jay in her interview. “Not when you’re 60 or 70, it’s when your 10, it’s when you’re 15, it’s when you’re posting something on Snapchat when you’re 18.”

That can sound scary and overwhelming, for sure. But not knowing your path and messing up are okay, she explains. That’s all a part of it. My favorite quote: “You have to be brave enough to fuck up.”

Listen to this episode, and at the end, you will be. So with that, Kiran Gandhi (and host Jay Buim), take it away.

Follow host Jay Buim on Instagram or visit his website here.

Logo and Feature illustrations by Kelly  Shami

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If You Were Styling Three Pairs of Punk Sunglasses, What Would You Do?

It is possible that this will sound ridiculous, possibly make you roll your eyes or even attempt to shut your computer screen until you realize it is not a laptop and clicking “sleep” frankly won’t produce the affect that slamming the screen down would, but one of the most trying challenges I have accepted as a writer who calls herself O.K. at self styling is taking three pairs of sunglasses, matching them to three different outfits from my personal arsenal and then calling them, “punk.”

Cause of challenge? The now-departed London Fashion Week, where the British Fashion Council partnered with Sunglass Hut to have attendees punk shit up. (I just cursed because that seemed like an anarchist thing to do).

What you’ll see in the above slideshow are three takes on the above, all taken across the pond and featuring a makeshift septum piercing. Let me break it down.

Exhibit A features a Peter Pilotto mini dress, which, granted, you likely would not select as a choice example of that which is punk but in trying to be punk about the concept of punk, I figured turning it on its head with this effeminate dress was appropriate. The velvet sandals are Dries Van Noten and fiercely (no other descriptive adjective will do it) comfortable. The leather jacket (there it is!) is by Veda, and if you want to talk about the refrigerator that I’m sitting on in slide 2, I’m willing to have that conversation. Holler at me you know where. (The comments section, Becky!)

Exhibit B is perhaps a bit more literal what with its lack of color and genuine interest in looking vaguely like a French Vogue editor as evidenced by my pairing black jeans (by Golden Goose, scored on Yoox and featuring exactly zero stretch) with a white blouse (Comme des Garçons, prairie-maid edition) and suspenders (It’s a Steve! It’s an Urkel! Nope, that’s just a girl with muffin top hair). The shoes are Steiger and can you see the septum piercing? LMK.

Finally, we reach exhibit C, where the pants look like ski-wear, shearling is just a hem-accent and saddle (slash golf) shoes are the perfect second-act in a musical called: Neck Scarf: a Journey From Exposed to Covered. The punkest element of this look has got to be my FUPA, no?

Yes.

Now, most importantly, I summon you to explain what you would or would not change about the above looks. Thx.

In Partnership with SunglassHut. Sunglasses by Michael Kors, Coach and Ray Ban.

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Your New Favorite Instagram: Unfortunate Portrait

If these doodles look familiar, that’s because they are. Illustrator Max Dower of Unfortunate Portrait sat Leandra front row between a well-hatted chef and a waiter during fashion week. He drew a BLT clutch for a little ditty I did about my diet and he put people in knits (plus gave them pets) for our story about the best fall sweater.

He is — and I say this as the absolute highest form of a compliment one can give — pretty weird. And thank god for his weird, because my life meant nothing before he created this:

I never knew true joy until this:

And I realized that all this time, I’d been missing out on what it meant to be happy to receive a dick pic.

Now I get it! Send me this pick of a punny dick and I will be happier than a kid in a ball pit.

You know how Foreigner — 80s crooners of the truest emotions — once sang that they wanted to know what love is? I used to sing along with tears in my eyes until Dower drew this…

And showed me.

Show the love back by following him on Instagram.  You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be confused about whether or not this is supposed to make you uncomfortable, and then you’ll spot North West as a human selfie stick.

Which, if you think about it, is probably next following Rick Owens’ human backpacks, anyway.

Illustrations by Max Dower via his Instagram account, @unfortunateportrait. Shop his stuff here.

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5 Top Fives: Amanda Brooks Lists the Essentials

Meet Amanda Brooks, contributing editor at Conde Nast Traveler/English countryside dweller with a newly relaunched website — I Love Your Style, proponent of the wicker bag as an all-purpose-purse and author of Always Pack a Party Dress. 

“Fashion is a glamorous industry,” she told me while describing her intent behind the book during a recent trip to New York. “I was trying to have a human voice in that world.” And she does: her book speaks to two kinds of people: 1) the young girl who loves fashion to a romantic extent, who wants the stories as much as the style, who wants to one day be a part of the industry while still embracing its more decadent, even frivolous side, and 2) for the woman who, regardless of age, may be at inflection point in her career.

And at the end of the day, that’s all of us, right? Women seeking reprieves from the doldrums of daily life in slideshows of far-away runways, who are just as confused about the next job and life steps as we are about what the hell to pack…which is where Amanda Brooks comes in today. Below, five lists of her top 5…

Top 5 Pieces of Career Advice

1. Don’t be afraid to take a job without a fancy name.

2. If you’re looking for a job but are utterly unsure about what you want to do, don’t “waffle” and wait for the perfect scenario. Choose something, make a decision then take it from there. You may surprise yourself. Or you may hate it! But at least you have momentum.

3. Prepare yourself now for the career you want, for the dream job, the dream industry. Luck happens — Proenza Schouler’s  Lazaro Hernandez met Anna Wintour on a plane. But just because you’re in the right place at the right time doesn’t mean you’re always ready to talk the talk.

4. There’s getting lost (career-wise) in the romantic sense, and then getting lost to the point where you don’t recognize who you are anymore. If you’re unhappy and being disrespected but sticking it out for a paycheck or prestige, get out.

5. But she highly suggests having another job lined up first.

Besides a party dress, what are the top 5 things you pack when you come to NY from England now?

1. Chloé cargo pants

2. New Balance for J.Crew navy and white running shoes

3. Some form of hippie top from Isabel Marant

4. A camouflage L.L. Bean nylon tote for hauling without the risk of a broken bag

5. Céline sunglasses

What about your top 5 England farm-life essentials? 

1. J.Crew mid rise matchstick corduroy trousers

2. Grenson leather lace up boots

3. An old Balmain military style peacoat in army green melton wool

4. My favorite Zara black plaid flannel shirt with gold snap buttons

5. A cashmere scarf that I knitted myself

Top 5 beauty and hair products that you absolutely always have to travel with?

1. Oil of Olay face cream

2. Kevyn Aucoin gel mascara

3. NARS Dolce Vita matte lip pencil

4. Laura Mercier eyebrow pencil

5. Moroccan Oil hair serum

What’s your go-to airplane outfit?

1. A Céline mens-style button down shirt

2. Point Sur denim Reid-style blue jeans

3. Adidas Stan Smiths

4. A navy down Uniqlo jacket

5. Hand cream. “Dry hands make me nervous.”

Follow Amanda Brooks on Instagram and check out her newly launched website, I Love Your Style.

Photographed by Krista Anna Lewis

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