Brooks Luby
It’s Never Too Late to Make Imperfection Beautiful
When Cheryl B. Engelhardt, a musician whose album was written while riding trains through Colorado, was nominated for a Grammy; she wanted a designer from that state to dress her for her red carpet appearance. The designer she reached out to was Brooks Luby, a Denver-based fashion designer known for her mastery of technique, elegance, and whimsy. The bodice Brooks created for the musician was so striking that Cheryl was selected for an appearance in OnlineVogue magazine, a career highlight for Brooks that could not have come at a better time.
Only a few months prior Brooks, then in her mid 70s, had received her second breast cancer diagnosis, having already undergone a mastectomy with her first when she was 40. Still reeling from that news, life threw Brooks yet another curveball. The house she and her husband viewed as their forever home caught fire, and while the firefighters were able to extinguish the flames before it was a total loss, the house would require extensive renovations. Brooks and her husband grabbed their most prized possessions, which for Brooks included her sewing machine and mannequin, and moved into temporary housing. It was there, under those stressful and disorienting circumstances, that the call came in to design for the Grammys. Brooks accepted without hesitation, even though she would have to use her bed as a makeshift sewing table, just as she had done back when she began sewing decades earlier.
Brooks fell in love with sewing at an early age and from the time she got her first sewing machine at the age of twelve, she was hooked. She began making outfits for herself – a box pleated red cotton skirt and coordinating vest was her first – as well as for her high school friends, and by the time she set off for college, she had no doubt her career would be in fashion. Following a year at the prestigious Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City she returned to Colorado, where she earned a degree in Fine Arts and Business Administration at Colorado University.
Brooks got her professional start running the “back of the house” operations at a Boulder boutique. Eventually, she returned to her hometown of Denver where she opened up her own shop. She became known for her carefully crafted designs, which tended to skim the body, allowing the wearer to move freely and with ease while still looking refined. Several years later, seeking greater control over her design process and worklife, Brooks transitioned her business from shop to atelier, meeting clients by appointment only and designing specifically to suit their needs within her own aesthetic. For Brooks, nothing was more gratifying than to see a woman enter the dressing room feeling self conscious only to emerge moments later with a newfound radiance and confidence.
Helping women gain that confidence in less than perfect bodies is something Brooks understood on an intimate level. Having undergone a mastectomy and forgoing reconstruction, not to mention the usual effects of aging, she has learned to dress her own body for exactly what it is.“My body flaws don’t define what I wear,” she says. “I define what I want to wear.” She finds beauty in both the imperfections of the clothes she creates as well as in the bodies that wear them, celebrating the full spectrum with her increasingly playful designs. Whether helping a fellow breast cancer survivor dress for a special lifestyle event or a musician make her red carpet debut, Brooks creates clothes that allow women to show up as they want to in the world.
How she shows up in the world, and the contribution she makes to it, is something Brooks has given a lot of thought to. In addition to running her atelier and doing collaborations, she spends her time teaching workshops to share the wealth of knowledge she has accumulated over the years, focusing on sustainability and how it relates to fashion, an imperative when it comes to the preservation of the planet.
Recently, as part of a celebration of her 75th birthday, Brooks took a class in Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the breaks with lacquer. When she smashed her pot with a hammer, she ended up with only two broken pieces. Disappointed to have so little damage to repair, she asked the instructor for guidance, but instead of telling her to smash the pot again, the instructor posed a provocative question: “Have you ever found yourself making life more complicated than it needs to be?” she asked. Brooks conceded that she certainly had, even when simplicity was clearly the better path. And so, Brooks gathered her two broken pieces and began, working with what she had, making the imperfections beautiful, just as she has always done.
It is never too late to make imperfection beautiful.
For more information, visit https://brooksltd.net