Bio

IN SEARCH OF A WORD: ABOUT NANCY ANGIELLO

A couple of decades pounding the streets of Manhattan,
looking for stories, soaking them in, writing them out.
The heart of the matter.

I was born to the sounds of the clicking of typewriters.  Not really — I was born in a mundane hospital in Westchester County, NY.  But my father owned a typewriter and stationery store on Fordham Road in the Bronx, and our house and his store were full of typewriters — from classic black 1920s styles to the newest Olivettis. Alphabet letters and words were imprinted on my psyche, and how fingers create them with a press of a key button (oh the clackety-clack of that black inky arm), from when I was little.

As much as I watched my Dad with fascination as he typed out dozens of times, and with the speed of lightening (and he was my hero to be able to do this) “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’s back” as he tested keys, I was drawn to the pencil.  From an early age, I wrote short stories on white 3-hole punch loose-leaf paper (from the store, of course) and by 10 years old had a substantial portfolio.  One of my signature stories, indicative of surely great things to come, was entitled “Why Yellow Became Yellow” about the personality and character development of a yellow crayon, which, if I recall, highlighted my inquisitive, philosophical, philological writing style. Very early on, clearly I was a lexicologist of great note!   Sadly, this story has disappeared from the Nancy Angiello archives.

I keep writing all of my life. Then and now, it is a way to escape and to create different worlds. As a classic Gemini, I am either completely shy or completely social. There isn’t much in-between, and that suits a writer fine.  You can write when you’re feeling quiet, or lonely, or feeling too much too bear; or, you can write in ways that gain you social access and experience about which you’d never dreamt.  I’ve interviewed and conversed, hung out with and delved into everyone from Horst to Richard Avedon (I adore writing about photography) to Giorgio Armani and Calvin Klein. My best friend for ten years (from her 90th year until the day of her death, a few days shy of her 100th birthday), was the legendary German photographer Ilse Bing. I met her on assignment for New York Magazine.

When you are a lucky writer, your assignments sometimes turn to lifelong passions of interest and focus, and friendships.  Along the way and in between were and are hundreds and hundreds of subjects, interviews, and articles, from the world- famous to the NYC- famous, to the infamous and anonymous, in all walks of life, from club and restaurant owners, renowned chefs, Richard Avedon excitedly talking to me about his latest work, models calling from Milan, hairstylists and makeup artists from Hollywood to the hottest NYC salons; weekends at a beautiful house covering a home entertainment story for Bon Appétit…

There have been countless random subjects from art, food, opera stars, famous actors, artists, designers and models before they were famous (and when they were, too) fashion trends, hair, beauty, makeup everything, and eclectic encounters and assignments of unknown, eccentric characters from everywhere imaginable…actors and directors putting together amazing plays in strange places, performance art in SoHo when SoHo was isolated, almost abandoned, and one of the most exciting places on earth, bars and clubs popping up overnight…and I’d be there to experience it.

There were and always are quirky, odd and fascinating experiences, all stemming from writing assignments, or all conjured and captured because I want– I need– to capture them in an essay or a piece.  The Frenchman who became the latest news in NYC for his little “bean people” graffiti art (famous for 15 minutes…), artists, store owners, theater people, gallery owners who were doing fascinating things then…and now. Or for many of the stories, they were captured in a time and space, and where the subjects are today, I don’t know.  It doesn’t matter.  All of them inspired me to write.

My career started as a young assistant at Giorgio Armani, where I met the tanned, gorgeous legend when he’d light up the showroom in NYC; working there spoiled me for life with glamour and luxury, with Mangia lunches every day, Frank the personal chef, Iman coming in for fittings before the shows, famous photographers in for shoots.

Even though I always wanted to go to grad school for creative writing, and be an intellectual, and an academic, and write short stories and teach for a living, or run away back to Italy where my roots are and where I belong, and live on a vineyard with my gorgeous Italian husband who of course I would have, NYC grabbed me forever.  And lucky for me, writing does take me places, whether far away or close, or even if it is in the imagination or by proxy, and to blend basically everything I’ve ever learned or want to learn into feature stories and essays.   I get to combine my love for academics and literature by having the subject be a really smart person or topic, or using my own smarts to make a silly subject maybe a little bit smarter, sassier, and to take it for a little heady, poetic spin.

From Armani I flew off to Bergdorf Goodman, where—besides handling all press, trunk shows, and working on the most fabulous fashion shows I have ever experienced (Karl Lagerfeld, Azzedine Alaïa, the Fendis, Donna Karan’s first launch; Jean-Paul Gaultier US debut) —part of my job was “babysitting” (as I’d scathingly call it, pretending it was a drag but really having a blast.  Blasé was big in the 80s), Keith Haring, who was using as his ad hoc studio (I guess he was sort of artist-in-residence!), working in what was then the massive, vaulted, colossal-ceilinged, empty space of the 7th Floor (now the Home department) to create huge murals for the Palladium.  There he was, with his drop-cloths and paints and massive stretched canvases…and me, hanging out with him, seeing if he needed company, and coming and going to that floor, watching him create his moving, kinetic, manic figures on his huge canvases. I didn’t even realize what exactly I was witnessing. It—this kind of scene, this experience, and Keith—was just part of my everyday life.

Keith Haring and I would have lunch every day for that month ( he liked a tuna sandwich) while he finished his work.  He signed his autograph on one of my paper lunch napkins…I had a feeling maybe this young guy, who was my buddy for those weeks, who sometimes got on my nerves, was going to be famous.

When I look back on those days, I cannot believe I hung out with him, alone in this cavernous space, for hours, in between writing up my press releases and showing the latest Charvet shirts to a fashion editor or getting the latest hot model’s portfolios to my boss. And then there was Mr. Andrew Goodman, dapper, elegant and sweet, who was still a presence in the store in those days, wandering the halls, so courtly, a living embodiment of the lost, lovely days of the early to mid-century of retail.  A most charming gentleman, he’d give me orchestra seats to the Metropolitan Opera…and I’d visit him and his wife Nina in their opulent apartment, where he was the last of the Goodmans to reside.

From Bergdorf Goodman to Henri Bendel as PR Director, where I worked for the brilliant and unforgettable Geraldine Stutz, then the long-time, famed owner and president of the store.  Nothing is the same without the old Bendel’s, and Miss Stutz gone.  Never was there such a perfect and delightful pr job.

After other equally glam pr jobs, where my work life required me to party with Jean-Paul Gaultier and run around after-hours clubs with him to find “real” models for his American debut show for thousands of guests (under the Big Apple Circus Tent with members of the Circus a part of the show, held at the Battery Park City landfill when there was no Battery Park City), I went back to my true love, writing…to New York Magazine, working with Ed Kosner, Jeannette Walls, Joe Klein, David Denby, Michael Gross, Corky Pollan, and a host of famed writers who taught me everything about research, reporting, the facts, the facts, looking for the edge, the angle, what was the story, separating fact from fiction, but with humor and creativity, and learning about great writing style.  We got paid nothing, but we all joked: “It’s free graduate school in journalism—and we get paid!”  At New York, I was getting published for the first time.  What a place for a writing debut.  A weekly with deadlines was a grueling pace, but there I met the most brilliant and funny people I know.  There is a mad hilarity on Thursday night and Friday morning…when you roll in after a late night deadline putting the magazine to bed…we were crazy, and I loved it. We all did.

From there to Mademoiselle as Beauty & Fashion Features Writer, and then freelance features writing since then for a range of Condé Nast, Time Inc. and Hearst Magazines, to content, articles and essays for digital news, e-commerce and fashion and beauty sites.  For the past 15 years I’ve focused on beauty, fashion, home design, entertaining, the arts, culture, shopping, and essay writing.  I write content for websites, e-commerce, fashion and cosmetic sites. I expanded into copywriting, and for clients like New York & Company, Saks Fifth Avenue and L’Oréal: I write everything from ad campaigns to direct marketing, pos and everything to do with brand, plus catalogs to packaging to press materials and sales, marketing and education collateral.  I’m there with the changes of the magazine and digital worlds with social media and all else, and am always stretching to learn, challenge and be challenged.

In writing, I always try to search for the heart of the matter.  Or, I let it come to me.  Sometimes the best writing happens when you are not searching for the perfect word, or trying to find the heart. Sometimes, often…the heart is open and just moves.  People and their stories are what move me, wanting to know the stories behind the story, wanting to know more and more, like peeling an orange.  When you grow up in a huge Italian family, it is all storytelling—family history, ghost stories, family legends, minutiae and the grand scale of storytelling.  Napolitani like my family are very dramatic.  The shortest stories can be an opera.  So whether it’s fashion or beauty or a profile, no matter what the subject— and even if it is…especially if is…something random, like finding two lines of e.e. cummings poetry etched into old, worn concrete pavement (see my first-person essay about that)—I have to know why.  I have to know the why of things. The drama of things.

Writing is like being a detective, even if you are far from an investigative journalist in the classic sense, like covering crime or hard news.  To me, whether it is fashion, beauty, a ruminative essay on some tiny, passing thing that many people might not notice, but that compels me to immerse myself in it…or covering a fashion show or interviewing a famous fashion designer or unknown artist, I’m looking maybe for the places between the words. What are the stories?  What are the stories, the heart, behind the words and the person or the thing or the moment?  As much as I love words and make my living writing them and creating streams of them, maybe what moves a reader the most is feeling if you, the writer, have captured the lightening-quick meaning and nuance, what lies just below the surface, between words and silence.  Wittgenstein called it “the unutterable.”

He wrote:  “If only you do not try to utter the unutterable, nothing gets lost.  And the unutterable will be contained in what has been uttered.” What can that possibly mean for a writer, who records what is uttered and whose writing thus is the utterable?  I don’t know. I think it means don’t force things, and listen. But somehow…I feel I do know what he means, but I say I don’t know, because some things are better left simmering.  They stay for a while in the unutterable, or maybe forever.  But I want to find out, like so many things, and keep writing about what I don’t know, and explore it even if I am left and if I leave unanswered.  And to leave something funny, or thoughtful, or smart, or helpful, or maybe even lovely.

—by Nancy Angiello 2011