Podcast Summary: What We Wore – Episode 167: Amy Larocca | How To Be Well
Date: Nov 8, 2025
Host: Laura Vinroot Poole
Guest: Amy Larocca

Episode Overview

This episode features a deeply personal and layered conversation between host Laura Vinroot Poole and journalist/author Amy Larocca, centering on Amy’s book How To Be Well—an exploration (and deconstruction) of the modern wellness industry and its complex relationship with women, fashion, and societal expectations. Together, Laura and Amy traverse Amy's fashion-forward upbringing, her career in journalism, the intertwined worlds of fashion and wellness, and the larger cultural messages women receive about self-improvement, aging, and perfectionism.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Challenge of Writing How To Be Well (01:13 – 02:20)

• Amy reflects on the difficulties in pitching her book to publishers—many wanted to know whether she was "for or against" wellness.
• Amy emphasizes nuance is essential: “We all live so deeply within this that it can't be like all one or all another. Like we're just in it.” (01:40)

2. Fashion and Wellness: Parallel Cultures (02:22 – 05:45)

• Laura and Amy discuss how fashion culture deeply intertwines with the wellness industry, especially in terms of thinness, elitism, insider knowledge, and aspirational behaviors.
• Amy is forthright about the persistent emphasis on thinness in both industries:
  Amy: “Let's just say it out loud, right? Like, all these fashion people getting colonics... That thinness is totally, like, the goal. And that thinness is the goal of a lot of fashion. Right? Let's just say it out loud.” (03:00)
• The “in-the-know” mentality is likened to status symbols in fashion (e.g., designer goods) repackaged as insider wellness knowledge.

3. Perfectionism Masquerading as Wellness (05:45)

• Laura quotes a key idea from Amy’s book:
  Laura: “We've gotten very focused on perfectionism masquerading as wellness.” (05:45)
• This resonated as a central thesis for both women and sets up reflective conversation about Amy’s background.

4. Personal & Professional Background (05:54 – 13:31)

• Amy shares her New York roots, the fashion legacy within her family, and stories from her early career—including her time at Brown, covering Paris couture shows at 21, and her fortuitous mentorship under Francine du Plessis Guay.
• She describes the growth of street style ("Lookbook" column at New York Magazine), her mother’s and grandmother’s legendary sartorial choices, and her own rebellion and return to loving fashion.

5. Serious Work Within Fashion Journalism (17:07 – 19:07)

• Amy reflects on how serious, intellectual work can be done inside fashion:
  Amy: “It was really Francine who Said, no, no, you can do sort of serious, interesting work inside fashion. Like, it doesn’t...” (17:21)
• Laura and Amy discuss the challenge and liberation of not being “just a fashion person.”

6. Career Trajectory – From Observer to Vogue to NY Magazine (19:38 – 22:38)

• Amy recounts her transition from The New York Observer to Vogue, and ultimately, a two-decade path at New York Magazine. She describes creative freedom and excitement as Gotham Style columnist and later as fashion director.
• “All I wanted to be was a new journalist, like Nora Ephron or Tom Wolf...” (20:03)

7. Why Fashion Stories Matter (22:50 – 25:15)

• For Amy, the value lay in covering not just the business of fashion, but the lived, cultural, and psychological experience of fashion—witnessing and documenting change from runways to streets.

8. Fashion + Wellness as Tools of Survival, Comfort & Armor (25:15 – 26:06)

• Both hosts agree that clothing and wellness function as ways to “elevate the banality of the everyday” and serve as both armor and self-expression. Amy: “How am I gonna make this feel like something? And fashion does that for us and wellness does that for us.” (25:35)

9. Leaving New York Magazine & Family Advice (26:22 – 31:02)

• Amy describes the shifting circumstances—COVID, motherhood, corporate changes, her book deal—that led her to leave NY Mag.
• Memorable advice from her mother-in-law, then-editor of the London Review of Books:
  Amy: “She was like, well, you can’t do that job right now. ...Get your kids situated. And in five years when your kids are up and running, why don’t you have this thought, this conversation, then. ...She was like, they'll call again.” (28:26–29:05)
• Amy reflects on how invaluable it was to have permission to admit difficulty and not succumb to “superwoman” pressure.

10. The Wellness Trap: Culture, Self-Improvement, and Aging (31:24 – 41:36)

• Laura and Amy scrutinize how wellness perfectionism can become yet another gendered burden:
  Amy: “I think because we're so conditioned to this idea that we're supposed to be improving ourselves all the time and feeling less than...” (36:33)
• They discuss the pendulum swings in women's health (e.g., menopause), the role of fear and secrecy (“there’s a secret out there we don’t know”), and the ultimately inescapable forces of time and biology.
• Amy captures a core contradiction:
  Amy: “...they keep saying, get you back to yourself. ...yourself is aging, if you’re lucky. ...the best possible version of 50 is not necessarily 28.” (40:13–40:55)
• Laura shares her personal experience of pursuing wellness as a way to stave off illness and the paradoxical relief of accepting what can’t be controlled:
  Laura: “It’s tiring. It’s like, really, really exhausting.” (42:49)

11. Feedback from Readers & Cultural Connection (43:58 – 45:00)

• Amy emphasizes how meaningful it’s been to have real conversations with women readers, reclaim vulnerability, and shed isolation:
  Amy: “...we get to have these conversations and say, oh, yeah, it’s not all one thing, it’s not all another. ...Because I think you can feel really alone. Like, am I the only one?” (44:18–44:58)

12. Hopes for the Next Generation (46:01 – 47:04)

• Amy talks about raising her two daughters amid beauty/wellness pressures and wishes for them to have “less noise in their heads... with a little more confidence to say, yeah, no, it’s not for me. I don’t need it.” (46:08)

13. Family, Tradition, and Change (47:13 – 48:21)

• Amy relates the generational weight of “food restriction, presenting your best self, not doubting”—and how her own questioning can be challenging for her mother, to whom these behaviors “are religion.”

14. Humor & Lightness: Fashion Anecdotes & Prom Memories (48:25 – 51:29)

• The episode closes on lighter notes:
  • Amy shares a witty story about her mother-in-law and the infamous “Amazon jacket” (“God, I hope so [have body dysmorphia].” – 48:37)
  • Describes her anti–Laura Ashley prom dress (“like a skin-tight black Vivian Tam mini dress with a sheer black overlay... big earrings, big hoops, and BCBG platform sandals.” – 50:28)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We’re not gonna quit [wellness]. Like, I myself, I’m not quitting. But I also don’t just want a guide that’s like, ‘yeah, it’s gonna fix everything.’ ...no one lives that way.” – Amy, (01:58)
• “All these fashion people getting colonics ...the kind of elitism is another connection with fashion. ...Having the insider knowledge ...it’s a branding and a marketing thing.” – Amy, (03:20–04:18)
• “We’ve gotten very focused on perfectionism masquerading as wellness.” – Laura quoting Amy’s book, (05:45)
• “This word, wellness. Wellness. Wellness. ...I was like, that’s it.” – Amy, on realizing the book’s theme, (34:20)
• “She was like, they'll call again. ...we’re allowed to actually admit difficulty.” – Amy, about her mother-in-law’s advice, (29:05)
• “Get you back to yourself... yourself is aging, if you're lucky.” – Amy, (40:13)
• “I am in it. ...Being able to see it doesn't mean you are not in it.” – Amy, (41:36)
• “It was almost a relief. ...that was my last 25 years, was actually trying to stave off this illness that I ended up getting that was not that bad.” – Laura, (43:36)
• “We're all just trying to get through the night here and to just try and like, have a totally, like, judgment free zone...” – Amy, (46:01)
• “The cost of being a woman... you don’t question. ...But I don’t know that some of my kind of questioning of it has been easy [for my mom].” – Amy, (47:13)
• “God, I hope so.” – Amy’s mother-in-law, on body dysmorphia, (48:37)

Selected Timestamps

• 01:13: Amy discusses the challenge of defining her book’s stance on wellness.
• 03:00 – 04:18: Discussion of fashion’s fixation on thinness, exclusivity, and “insider” wellness trends.
• 05:45: Perfectionism as the new face of wellness.
• 17:07: Taking fashion journalism seriously as a form of storytelling and cultural reflection.
• 25:35: Fashion and wellness as tools to “elevate the banality of the everyday.”
• 29:05: Mother-in-law’s career advice: “They’ll call again.”
• 40:13: The pursuit of “returning to yourself” and the trap of anti-aging.
• 44:58: How feedback from readers fostered solidarity and openness.
• 46:08: Amy shares what she wishes for her daughters—less noise, more confidence.
• 50:28: Amy’s anti–Laura Ashley prom dress memory.

Tone & Language

The conversation is candid, witty, and warm—marked by reflective honesty, mutual understanding, and moments of self-deprecating humor. Both Amy and Laura are open about their personal insecurities, professional journeys, and deeply human questions about aging, health, and self-concept.

Takeaway

Amy Larocca’s journey, as shared in this episode, is an incisive, intimate look at the impossible pressures women face from the wellness industry and fashion culture. Together with Laura Vinroot Poole, she unpacks the cost of chasing perfection and urges listeners toward a more forgiving, nuanced, and communal approach to “being well”—one that values imperfection, open conversation, and relief from the exhausting demands of self-optimization.