Amanda Brooks

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• Chloé will celebrate its 60th anniversary this year — and in grand fashion. Among the scheduled festivities are a retrospective exhibition and a party in conjunction with the Spring 2013 show. The house will also release a capsule collection based on garments from its archives, redecorate its Paris boutique, and publish a book with Rizzoli. [WWD]
  

• The catalog for Daphne Guinness's Christie's clothing auction is online. Hopeful buyers will be able to bid on dresses from Lanvin and Alexander McQueen, a Lacroix opera coat, and a selection of size 37 shoes. [The Cut]
  

• Gucci recently bought a stallion named Vleut and, in honor of the brand's founder, Guccio Gucci, renamed it Guccio. The hope is that Guccio will make an appearance at this Summer's Olympic Games in London, though he currently resides at the Dutch home of Australian equestrienne Edwina Alexander. [Elle]
  

• Speaking of the Olympics, rumor has it that British models Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley will participate in the closing ceremonies at the London games. Details are scant, but the three are said to be participating in a display of fashion from top British designers like Vivienne Westwood and Sarah Burton. [Modelinia]
  

• Ahead of her move to the English countryside, Amanda Brooks has donated a portion of her high-end wardrobe to the New York City Opera's annual pop-up thrift shop. There is reportedly lots of Prada, 3.1 Phillip Lim, Jil Sander, Tuleh, Yves Saint Laurent, and Chanel — and "loads of shoes." [Page Six]
  

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."

Amanda Brooks says she'll focus on her writing during her upcoming stay in England.

Brooks broke her blogosphere silence this week for the first time since last February with a post on her site I Love Your Style. In it, she explained that she will be taking a yearlong "creative sabbatical" when she moves with her family to a farmhouse in Oxfordshire, England, this Summer.

"First on my agenda? To get my blog and up and running again," Brooks wrote. "I also have ambitious writing plans for the next year, and you all will be the first to know about them as they unfold."

Since that post went live, Brooks has written one post a day. The most recent one focuses on trench coats designed by Junya Watanabe.

Brooks had been the fashion director of Barneys since February 2011, but she announced she would leave the retailer in March to pursue other opportunities. She released the fashion advice book I Love Your Style in 2009 and launched her blog of the same name in 2010.

>> Outgoing Barneys Fashion Director Amanda Brooks is known for her impeccable style, and the organizational system that helps her achieve it is, well, heavenly.

In a recent interview for The Aesthete, Brooks explained to stylist Annabel Tollman that her closets are organized so that she's always closest to what she wants to wear at the moment. When things go out of rotation, they get farther away from her main wardrobe — and when she doesn't wear a garment at all, it might end up in a version of wardrobe hell. Brooks elaborates:

". . . I have a main closet built into my bedroom that is my current clothing. At the end of the season, if I haven't worn something for a while I have a secondary closet in my bathroom; off-season on one side and then purgatory on the other. If things are in purgatory for a year or two and haven't been worn, then pieces go to the basement, which is the equivalent of hell, or they get given away. I have moods for things in the closet, and sometimes I regret giving things away. I'll find myself schlepping down to the basement and digging through the boxes to find a piece. The things I consider friends are the ones that never leave my main closet."

Brooks didn't speak to her decision to leave Barneys, which she announced last Thursday. But although her job is changing, she told Tollman her style will likely remain the same.

"I return to the '70s more than everything else; classic, and a little bit groovy. A little shrunken stripe with a cap sleeve, some oversize sunglasses, maybe a little flare on my jeans, the bamboo-handled Gucci bag. It suits my body; no boobs, lean hips . . . I feel like some people have a taste for one decade and a body for another. But for me my body and heart are both ’70s, so it's pretty straightforward. I'm a very contemporary creature."

>> These stories and more — here, in our daily news roundup.