Stephanie Broek
Stephanie Broek (born 1989) is an Amsterdam-based fashion writer and Editor-at-Large at Vogue Netherlands. With over 15 years in the fashion world, she combines sharp editorial insight with a global perspective, all while balancing her career with life as a mother. Rooted in Dutch heritage and inspired by international culture, Stephanie brings a thoughtful, elegant voice to fashion storytelling.
Note 01 A book you love
I read In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park over ten years ago, and I still think about it often. Yeonmi Park was born and raised in North Korea and later managed to escape, which makes her story especially powerful. There are so few firsthand testimonies about what life is really like in North Korea, and reading about her world before her escape helped me better understand and visualize it. Her descriptions were both harrowing and beautiful, especially the passages where she wrote about her love for her family and for nature. The journey she took to escape, including the human trafficking she endured and the crossing of the Mongolian desert to finally reach freedom (something she didn’t even know existed), made a lasting impact on me. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand more about North Korea and the resilience of the human spirit.
Note 02 A book to help others
This question is difficult, because the answer feels deeply personal and subjective. But in a strange and unexpected way, My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh helped me. I carry a certain darkness in me, and reading about a narrator who tried to disappear into pills, sleep, and isolation felt uncomfortably familiar. Watching her numb herself, shrink her world, and mistake absence for healing made something very clear to me: that is not the way out. The book didn’t comfort me, it warned me. And somehow, that warning was a gift. It showed me a version of myself I didn’t want to become, and in doing so, it gently pulled me back toward life. It de-influenced me in the best possible way.
Note 03 A book that influenced your work
Grace, a memoir by Grace Coddington. The book describes her career in detail, with incredible anecdotes, and is so well written that it feels as if you’re there. She also writes beautifully about her love life. Although Grace is a stylist and I’m a writer, we both work for Vogue, and reading how she built her career shaped mine.
Note 04 Why did you start reading
I started reading because I was bored. From the moment I could read, I went to the library every week. I’m from a small town, and reading became my escape from reality. My boyfriend once noticed that in almost every childhood photo of me, I’m holding a book. It’s true, I was always reading. On holidays, I read all day long. It was the pre–e-reader era, so I brought as many books as my suitcase weight allowed. Two weeks into a three-week holiday, I had finished them all and didn’t know what to do with myself.
Note 05 A quote
"We tell ourselves stories in order to live." – Joan Didion, The White Album (1979)
Note 06 Where do you like to read the most?
On the beach, I used to love reading for hours. Now that I have a daughter, I unfortunately don’t have that time anymore. When I read, I become completely absorbed in a book, but with a three-year-old, I always need to keep an eye on her. For the next few years, I know I won’t be able to read on the beach the way I used to, and I have to admit I miss it. Even so, I love our beach days together, playing in the water, and building sandcastles. And I already look forward to the day when we’ll lie on beach chairs next to each other, both reading, only taking breaks to swim or eat.
Note 07 A must-visit place for book lovers:
Athenaeum in Amsterdam is a large bookstore with an incredible magazine section.
Note 08 A book as a gift
The Chanel team gifted me the coffee table book Tilda Swinton: Ongoing after I visited the Tilda Swinton exhibition at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. It’s a beautiful book and a lovely reminder of an unforgettable day.
Note 09 Stephanie’s nightstand?
Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. Now that the series is coming out soon and we’ve collectively been endlessly inspired by her style, I wanted to learn more about Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy as a person. My friend Sasha gifted me this book, and I love reading it. It’s so well written that I actually feel like I’m dipping my toes into her life, a fly on the wall, witnessing it all.
Note 10 A book to your younger self
Not necessarily for my younger self, but two books I read when I was 17–19 were The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. A childhood friend of mine is originally from Afghanistan, and we read the books together and talked about them for hours. The stories broke my heart, but they were also full of beauty and a deep love for Afghanistan.
Note 11 A character you love
Ouf, maybe no single character. The beauty of books is getting to know real, imperfect humans. Every character has left an impression on me — some positive, some negative — and all have helped me see the depth of a person and understand their perspective.
Note 12 Your ideal book dinner
Honestly, I would invite my friends. Traveling for work has brought me amazing people in cities around the world (Paris, Stockholm, Copenhagen, New York, London) and I’d love to have them all together at one table, along with my friends from Amsterdam. And, of course, I would include my angel friends in heaven, Lulu and Tanice, whose presence I still feel in every memory and every laugh.
Note 13 My bookmark is...
I should really get a proper bookmark. For now, I just memorize the page number where I left off (which doesn't always work tbh). I would love one of those white lace bookmarks. I’m a bit of a perfectionist/purist and can’t handle dog-ears; it feels like such a waste of a book. That’s also why I prefer hardcover books as I can’t stand it when my books get wrinkled.
Note 14 If you were to write a book,
who would you dedicate it to?
My daughter Olive.
Cerrar