During a break from Seventh Avenue in the 70's, the designer opened a new fashion company for women who wanted to wear his evening dress designs. Brooks began working from his own town house, where he both showed and manufactured many of the clothes. Inviting store buyers to his shows at 158 East 70th Street, he joined his theatrical flair with the understatement of the current ready-to-wear season in thoroughly successful collections.

"I was fitted in clothes of this caliber in my late youth in Hollywood," recalls Claire Trevor, the actress who was a guest.

The show, Dance a Little Closer, is infused with an "air of drop dead glamour of the Thirties, an era that's always been a rich source of visual imagery for him." (WWD, 1983) "Brilliant designers like Adrian and Travis Banton inspired their audiences because they exposed them to a higher level of society," Brooks said. "The clothes were so elegant. The most graceful period in clothing was the Thirties. I thought [the gowns] had a sweep and majesty. A case in point is the way Carole Lombard, Constance Bennett, Rosalind Russell and Katherine Hepburn looked in beautifully designed clothes a Depression-era audience could only aspire to... these stars touched everyone with their shimmer and sparkle and I don't think that's a bad thing at all."

The new concept behind the Brooks enterprises in the 70's and 80's was based on the word "usefulness". "I'm going on the assumption that people have so much on their minds - inflation, community, country, culture, that they don't have the time to think in-depth about clothes. Every thoughtful designer has a challenge to create clothes or home furnishings or cars or whatever to make living easier. Fashion is a delight. But it' s no longer a life or death matter."

Brooks designed fashions based on changing lifestyles: timeless fashion, beautiful clothes that appealed to customers from the avant-garde to the prim and proper.

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