ON A MISTY spring afternoon, Amanda Brooks ambles across the main square of Stow-on-the-Wold, an English market town nestled in the Cotswolds. With a few antiques under her arm and a rescue dog named Ginger at her side, the onetime Barneys New York fashion director wears a black below-the-knee skirt, a faux-fur gilet and sensible brown loafers. Stylish but no-nonsense, Brooks looks the part of a local shopkeeper, which is precisely the vibe she’s going for: Next month she’s opening Cutter Brooks, a lifestyle boutique that will bring to Stow a selection of international brands and independent makers.
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Once a mainstay of Manhattan’s social circuit, the Westchester-raised Brooks left New York with her family in 2012 to take a yearlong sabbatical in the English countryside. It would be spent at Fairgreen Farm, the idyllic childhood home of her husband, artist Christopher Brooks, near Stow. Now, six years after the family’s U.K. arrival, the opening of Cutter Brooks confirms that what began as a temporary stint has become a permanent stay.
“I’ve wanted a shop since I was 23,” says Brooks, now 44. “I love selling. I love sharing my point of view and my passion.” Set in a 17th-century building, Cutter Brooks (the moniker combines her maiden and married names) will capture Brooks’s take on the English countryside aesthetic: “A little bit bohemian, a little eccentric,” she says. “But more farmhouse than stately home.”
‘Amanda has a lot of style, and she understands fashion so well.’
Raw plaster walls, pine flooring, wicker pendant lights and French antiques cement the store’s haute-homestead look. In the front room, custom shelving will host John Derian decoupage pieces and Astier de Villatte ceramics, alongside a selection of eclectic table linens, vintage cutlery and Buly 1803 beauty products.
In addition to well-known names, the store will stock off-kilter finds sourced during Brooks’s travels, such as C.S. Simko leather belts, crafted by a South Carolina pediatrician, and long cotton nightgowns from Florentine boutique Loretta Caponi. “I think they’re very sexy,” says Brooks of the frilly frocks, “and good for English weather.”
The back room, a space of flagstone floors and exposed brickwork, will feature more fashion, including easy dresses from Spanish brand Masscob, knitwear from New York label Hesperios and Venetian slippers by Le Monde Beryl. (Most of the offerings will also be available through the store’s website, online in mid-June.) “Amanda has a lot of style, and she understands fashion so well,” says Diane von Furstenberg, who has known Brooks since Brooks was 18. “She may have gone to live in the countryside with the sheep, the garden, the rubber boots and all the rest, but she hasn’t lost her touch.”
In the back of the shop, a nook that opens onto a patio and garden will eventually host a small cafe serving little else than “a very good cup of coffee and maybe a savory scone,” Brooks says.
Her own homemade jams will also be available for purchase. “Amanda has an almost 1950s take on England, with all her domestic pursuits,” says Carole Bamford, founder of the Daylesford Organic Farmshop chain and one of Brooks’s Cotswolds neighbors. “She’s more English than the English.”
The jam recipe is included in Brooks’s new book, Farm From Home: A Year of Stories, Pictures, and Recipes From a City Girl in the Country (Blue Rider Press), out June 5. The volume features candid accounts of the ups and downs of farm living, accompanied by personal photos. “I’m an aesthetic perfectionist,” admits Brooks. “My pictures tell the fantasy version of the story, while the writing is more forthright.”
Brooks also uses the book to take stock of her changed life. “In New York I felt like a chameleon: I could be anything to anybody,” she says. “When I moved here it defined me in a way that was very grounding. I got my time back, and I was able to find a much greater sense of self in a quieter existence.” cutterbrooks.com
