Lena, Lana, and lawsuits.

Natasha Stagg's gossipy few weeks inside New York publishing.

This week, I’m 90% offline because I’m on my honeymoon. Instead of going dark, I handed the keys to Feed Me over to a few friends, kind of like when Johnny Carson would let Joan Rivers fill in for him. The newsletters and comments will be available to all readers this week.

---

Hello, fellow Feed Me readers, this is

Natasha Stagg

—I’ve been mentioned a couple times in these posts (thank you, Emily) with links to my Substack called

Selling Out

, which is maybe best described as diaristic with some reportage, although I’ve been told that it’s real writing. I have also published a few books (one novel and two story collections), which you may easily look up if inclined, and my second novel, just announced, will be out in September.

Over the weekend, I was upstate for a friend’s 40th and honestly thought I’d get some juicy stories for you guys there, but instead everyone was in a mellow mood because the weather was so nice, and somehow our party quite comfortably inhabited this rambling lakeside estate without a complaint about life back in the city (gossip usually starts with complaining). Instead I’ll reflect on the past few weeks… and would love to get a conversation going in the comments/chat about any of the below, but especially experiences with magazine work and compensation/lack thereof.

After dinner with friends at Roman’s (the tilefish with fava beans from their daily menu was delicious) and Catherine Lacey’s birthday party downstairs at Von (I crashed), we learned that someone is saying more than he should about a hookup, someone regrets publishing a book (“I thought it was satire”), a marriage has ended, another one is maybe open, and other literary world dramas—firings, a large advance amount, unsavory relationships, etc. And yes, the blurbing business is still cutthroat!

Writers love to talk about this stuff at loud bars and hope you forget what they’re saying, myself among them. One came up to me and literally asked for a secret in exchange for another, then told me something I’d already heard. Didn’t count, I said (and got away with it). I asked my friend about the New Yorker art critic getting fired and although he was there, he couldn’t elaborate more than what’s been reported: the guy was being annoying and people didn’t seem to like him.

The Paris Review Spring Revel at Cipriani 42nd Street, usually a hotbed for this type of talk, was either uncharacteristically sanitary or I was at the wrong table (Gagosian’s). I’m almost positive Anna Weyant’s (the latest issue’s cover artist) table was interesting. Our MC, Lena Dunham, got mixed reviews at the after party, but I found her jokes about trying to hug Fran Lebowitz (“I asked if it was appropriate and she said no”), Wallace Shawn and Deborah Eisenberg being our world’s Bennifer, along with some of her signature self-deprecation, quite entertaining. As was a poetic reading by legendary guest of honor Anne Carson. Several attendees told me they cried.

Each table has a host: someone who purchased it or a celebrity writer, one of whom told me that his table was mostly finance guys that attend galas no matter what, as tax write offs. They appeared confused the entire evening by its programming. Why go, then? By his assumption, the writer told me, it was to meet women. There are always quite a few ladies in stunning sequined gowns posing for selfies in the bathroom, it’s true. But somehow, the singles stayed pretty segregated, we noticed.

The best part of the gift bag, by the way, was a card deck with the commissioned painting of Lana Del Rey by Sam McKinnis on them. I split a cab with him, Michael Londres, and Megan Nolan to Metrograph and we discovered that Sam’s tote contained cards by another artist. None of us wanted to trade him for ours. A few people were overserved, but in contrast to previous Revels, behavior was aboveboard (to the vocalized dismay of some guests). As an example of how it often goes, someone pointed at a palm tree planter and said, “That’s where I threw up last time.”

At another writer’s birthday party, I congratulated someone on her good reviews and she said she’s gotten pans, too, and in important places. This is, ironically, a normal response to that exact compliment.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about a fluffy Times piece on indie magazines with a few personal anecdotes disputing its loose thesis that they’re having another heyday, and asked readers to reply with anything they know: Here’s a job listing for an administrative assistant position at the newish food/fashion journal Family Style. To summarize, this person would work over 45 hours a week, for every department: available in the office 5 days/week 9–6… weekends when needed… opening and closing… managing EIC’s calendar… coordinating/taking notes at meetings… overseeing internship programs (hiring, scheduling, managing, training, assigning)... creating sales materials… mailouts… leading special projects…

Similar jobs listed on LinkedIn offer pay ranges: $44–$73k, $80k–$100k. This one, I saw, from a screenshot of an email that was sent to me, is offering a $1,750 monthly retainer. That means it’s freelance (no benefits, no stability, no PTO)—and it adds up to $21k before taxes, if December and August are included. If they are not, this is a “salary” of $17,500. In New York, in 2025? Right.

Most of my friends had/have this response to the topic of small-run niche fashion magazines being shady: Who cares? The age of these particular “glossies” is long past its prime, and for obvious reasons. So, what we’re discussing is simply a series of vanity projects—for stylists and photographers to get stories in portfolios, for writers to get bylines, for celebrities and models to amass covers, and for founders to create calling cards that lead them to bigger, better jobs in advertising.

Many of the publications in question are transparently, sustainably funded by parent brands (032c by Ssense and AFM by Feeld, for example) and/or are reportedly successful as international shopping services/creative agencies. That’s now the goal, it seems—to become, like a startup, enough of a viral voice to be bought by some larger entity or utilized for contract jobs.

That’s a high benchmark, though, with diminishing returns. And yet, just yesterday, I received another email from someone “working on a new [magazine] designed to meet the needs of artists and art connoisseurs [that will be] covering a range of cultural issues” seeking a 1,000-word essay from me on fashion. Deadline: about two weeks from today. Payment: not mentioned.

We know, intuitively, why people want to start their own magazines. Everyone, especially New York, loves the idea of officiating prestige. Issue launches are the perfect excuses to throw multi-sponsor parties in chic venues, inviting flashy guests from their pages. A friendly project that perhaps pays in favors, trade, and promises of exposure may end up influencing our/the culture, either in feeds or on mood boards. And so many cool people should get credit for being cool—the type of legitimating that older magazines once provided. Still, I’m curious, in the time of Substack etc., why the print magazines that are decidedly not doing well enough to pay their employees don’t pivot or shutter.

My interest is admittedly personal. I write for/have edited many of these titles, being a freelancer who needs/wants my name out there. It is also stubborn. As I’ve mentioned in my own newsletter, some other freelancers and I successfully sued L’Officiel USA for nonpayment years ago and have watched it continue to announce issues. This is the case with many a New York indie media venture (remember when Interview reportedly owed hundreds of thousands in unpaid invoices, and it simply hired an entirely new editorial staff?).

Traditionally, these magazines were funded by luxury advertisers who relied on print placements for eyeballs that now mostly stick to the internet. The work that goes into profitability must take on the major task of making up for that deficit. The more I ask why, the more stories I hear that make for more questions. Another anonymous tip, among many about Document: it is being sued, again.

One person told me that they are “already delinquent on installments for their $600k settlement and, as far as I know, the October issue (‘the biggest ever’) never went to print (unpaid retouchers; no high res; unpaid printer).” There is much more to the story, I’m also told, and it gets pretty personal. But that’s the thing: no one wants to air out dirty laundry unless it might get them paid what they’re due—and likely it won’t.

I’ve been asked to reach out to anyone owed money by Document. If this is you, I’ll put you in touch with an organizer making a formal complaint to the city. It will all be anonymous, unless you’d like to be on the record for a story that will inevitably be written. It might take years, but these payments do eventually get made, with enough pressure from a growing mass of small delinquent invoices.

Yesterday, Sam and I were guests on a radio show called Angelic Transmissions on East Village Radio to promote his eponymous Rizzoli monograph (I’m in it by way of a transcribed conversation we had about his paintings). The radio dialogue circled topics such as Connecticut (“there’s nothing wrong with it”), hometowns versus New York (“as if you can really know a city”), and film discourse (“It’s so hard now to watch a movie”). After, we had lunch with the hosts, who we’ve known forever, and so had much to catch up on, including the book launch party—it happened last week at The River, which I think serves great snacks: hot dogs, grilled cheese, and crudités.

Later, I participated in the first of a reading series called Fashion Fiction, hosted by Mikaela Dery at Sloane’s, the event space part of The Manner Hotel in SoHo, which opened in September. Right away I spotted Emmeline Clein and Audrey Wollen, who I’d told to come. Everyone had something to say about the decor: Chinoiserie panels, globular wall ornaments, sconces and many-armed lamps and chandeliers that dip below eye level, Hollywood Regency fixtures and velvet booths, a huge central “fireplace” with a sort of brutal metal chimney cone and a pile of real logs lying atop an orange-glowing whisper of a fog machine. It didn’t give off heat, much less light the wood on fire. “Everywhere you look it’s shapes, shapes, shapes,” said Audrey, which makes sense when you see it.

At the other end of the bar, without all that as distraction, Rachel Tashjian, who read from her 2022 interview with Miuccia Prada, said, “This could have gone a number of ways, but Mikaela picked the best people for it,” and I agree. The list included Young Kim, who read from her cult tell-all My Year in Hell, and Judith Thurman, who taught the children that Stéphane Mallarmé published a magazine in 1874 called La Derniere Mode. He also wrote it, under several pseudonyms, some male and some female. “And he wasn’t gay—well, he was married,” Judith said, when I asked if I could read more (the answer is yes, but in a not-great translation, collected in 2004 as the book Mallarmé on Fashion).

(She also read from her own 2014 piece on Rei Kawakubo that starts with what her old editor calls “a Thurman lede,” or a personal anecdote: “Does it really matter what one wears? I sometimes think my life might have been different if I had chosen the other wedding dress. I was getting married for the second time…”)

She was happy I’d chosen to read from Elizabeth Hawes’s memoir/exposé Fashion is Spinach (1937) and said she tried once to write the untold story of Hawes’s life, but for a magazine that needs a hook, and with Hawes there really isn’t one, since her work isn’t being reissued. Now, maybe it would make more sense to cover someone blacklisted under McCarthyism, considering the era we’re entering.

I’m far from a Hawes historian or completist (other books include Why Women Cry and the comically long-titled Anything But Love: A Complete Digest of the Rules for Feminine Behavior from Birth to Death; Given out in Print, on Film, and Over the Air; Seen, Listened to Monthly by Some 340,000,000 American Women—tongue-in-cheek ladies’ advice). Did I know she was married to filmmaker Joseph Losey? I didn’t. And I’m ashamed to say, as someone who has written about famous guests there, I wasn’t aware she died at the Chelsea Hotel. What else don’t I know, and should? Someone, commission Judith Thurman to write this!

After that, dinner and a pineapple margarita with Audrey at Lupe’s, an old standby. As for recent culinary standouts, Ivan Gaytan and I had oysters at Gage & Tollner last week, a lunch of asparagus and quiche at Orsay before a long walk in Central Park another day, and a dinner of many small plates (I recommend the yaki eringi: grilled oyster mushroom) at Sozai after walking up the East River to see the new Midtown Greenway Extension one evening.

One rainy afternoon, after visiting the Antiquarian Book Fair at the Armory (it’s always worth the $32 price of entry but this year’s was too crowded for my liking), I decided to see Camille Henrot’s show at Hauser & Wirth and Laura Owens’s show at Matthew Marks, then the David Zwirner group show called Giving Shape to Space. They cheered me up! Sorry, all of those are closed now. Afterwards, though, I wandered into Chelsea Market and had a lovely lunch at the counter Maki A Mano (yellowtail and leche de tigre ceviche plus two handrolls and an ume soda), which is truly the perfect place (if it isn’t busy, and it weirdly wasn’t) to eat alone and people-watch.