The motivation for creating this website, which features forty years of journalism and books, began with a visit to the storage unit in my New York City apartment building. I avoid this journey because overflowing boxes and shelves cause anxiety. My mission was to find an article I wrote in 1994 that a fellow writer wanted for her own research. 

There before me was a nearly complete library of my work. Not just tear sheets or photocopies but the actual magazines and newspapers. Some stored in moving boxes (Moishe’s Moving Company, Westside Movers, Gander & White, those titles alone showcased a personal history) others stacked on shelves without thought to order. I am blessed with a good memory and as I plowed through them I knew what articles were missing particularly from my years as a contributing editor at Architectural Digest and Town & Country. Thus began the hunt for finding “vintage” periodicals on Ebay, (thank God for magazine collectors). Soon I was bargaining with someone in Des Moines; haggling with a seller in Pittsburgh; begging a “collector” to sell me just the one Architectural Digest issue I wanted from 1992 as opposed to the whole year. 

Once obsessive compulsive me had secured every missing magazine a morbid thought popped into my head: I would die, my children would arrive to clean out my “effects” and upon encountering the wealth of periodicals they would, for the sake of time and lack of storage space in their own houses, dispose of them. I understand the offspring dilemma having been in the position of cleaning out my deceased mother’s house. I did more tossing than saving. If all this were thrown away, I realized my grandchildren, if one day they were interested, might never know about my career or read my work. I also thought my grown children might enjoy reading me. So much of the journalism and books were written when they were young. 

I still have a schoolgirl scrapbook mentality. So, my initial inclination was to remove the stories from their original bindings and reorganize them into well-presented portfolio albums. I started this outdated task but soon gave up --- I realized that even those might eventually end up in a landfill. My friend Richard Mauro suggested a website. And luckily, he could help me achieve that --- designing it, culling through the mounds of articles, thinking way above my creative pay grade. Best of all, I’ve known Richard since I was seventeen. He has witnessed many incarnations both personal and professional.

I sound old as I write this.  I am not. Or least I don’t consider myself old and I am still writing. Luckily for me, I can now choose when and what I want to write. Many of these articles and books were written when I was raising my children and supporting my family. Finishing a story while having a child on my lap or getting up at dawn to make a deadline and pack the suitcases for summer vacation. Shopping for dinner, stirring the sauce in between paragraphs. Finishing the bedtime stories and working until the wee hours of the morning. Those days have long since passed but even now, with a less hectic household, an office of my own (as opposed to the dining room table) I still find the process of carving out a story difficult. But I can say unequivocally, I enjoyed writing every article and book... I loved the interview process. Whether writing a story for Architectural Digest and gathering nuggets for decorating my own spaces, learning about architecture; meeting icons of the design industry. Whether writing profiles for periodicals or books, interviewing fashion designers, movie stars, women of style --- each was an adventure in understanding their personal journey, the psychological aspect of their character. I have always felt more like an anthropologist than a writer. Writing was the conduit for my curiosity about people, stirring my passion for reportage and documentary. The by-product of which was often learning something about myself. It was a form of education. 

I’ve included over one hundred pieces from a variety of magazines, some of which are still in print and some not. The anchor of the website is a complete compilation of articles I wrote for Architectural Digest and Town & Country. Working with T&C’s editor Pamela Fiori was one of the great joys. We concocted stories together and had a great time doing it.  Except for those publications, the criteria for inclusion here were simple: I chose articles that I enjoyed reading after all these years. The stories that made me laugh, the stories that I had forgotten I wrote, profiles of subjects I enjoyed interviewing and learning about. Many of the choices are sentimental. The first piece of journalism I ever wrote is here (European Travel and Life, 1987). Travel stories where I was given an opportunity to explore a specific interest: The Civil War battlefields in my home state of Virginia. Or a long-held fantasy to visit the Appenzell in Switzerland and how lucky I was that Nancy Novogrod, editor of Travel & Leisure gave me that opportunity. The series of advertorials I wrote for Bergdorf Goodman’s full-page fashion ads in the Sunday edition of the New York Times reads today like a social chronicle of the opulent big-haired, shoulder-padded go-go ‘80s. I often found my voice in unexpected platforms such as essays for Neiman Marcus’s THE BOOK --- their monthly magazine. I was given freedom to write about fashion and style, and they adjusted the advertising to match my stories. It was in those stories I wrote in the first person and tapped into my desire to write with humor, irony, poignancy and some self-deprecation. There’s a tribute to my dear friend Ahmet Ertegun in Avenue magazine in which I could share personal stories about a legend. A 2008 Quest Magazine first person article about my style influences focused on my love of Barbie (who knew I would be ahead of the curve on that until the 2023 motion picture release). The Daily Beast article about Bernie Madoff and the call from Tina Brown, the site’s founder and editor, who asked me to report as boots on the ground in Palm Beach (where I live in the winter), Madoff’s winter Ponzi scheme playground. “And oh, by the way,” said Tina “I need it in 24 hours.” A business writer I am not, a newspaper reporter I am not. It was terrifying and once completed in a day exhilarating. I learned something about myself in addition to “Hurricane Bernie” the title of the piece, that if put to the test I can write like the wind.

So how did I become a writer? By accident. My plan way back in the long ago as a young girl growing up in Virginia was to be an actress. If a fortune teller had told me that I would become an author and journalist I would have demanded the seer return my money. In school, I often chose a failing grade over writing term papers and book reports. Writing was a deep mystery to me ---- reserved for those I viewed as more studious, more academic, smarter than me. Writing still puzzles me. The process is hard, the pervasive thought that this is the story you won’t be able to finish because you can’t get it right. The little voice that says, “this is the last time I am ever going to write; I will find a new line of work.” I am not alone among my colleagues. I have compared enough notes with other writers who have a similar internal script. But always and thankfully --- when I review the published product, I do not remember writing it or recognize that the person reading it is the same human being as the author. 

I owe my accidental career to the late writer Jesse Kornbluth to whom I was married for ten years. He convinced me that a) I needed to support myself and that b) if I just wrote like I talked I would be just fine. It was Jesse who secured my first gig --- a story about London’s Chelsea neighborhood where I had lived for many years prior to returning to New York City. I discovered I loved the research, loved interviewing people but was frozen behind the typewriter (now computer) and the idea of writing like I spoke took years. But his encouragement worked. As I often struggled and tried to think of some other line of work he would always say: “Well, do you really want to work under fluorescent lights all day? Just chip away at it you will get there.” To this day, when I am writing and seriously stuck, I say it like a mantra, “Chip Away.” 

What I didn’t anticipate was the emotional reaction I would have to so many of pieces. I can in almost every instance recall what I was experiencing personally at the time of writing. Within the story there was a back story: Mine. Capturing all those personal stories would take a memoir. And that is one genre that I will never dabble in --- or should I never say never?