Collected Agenda with Natasha Stagg

Guest Edit #10

Drawing on the diary as a medium of both confessional interiority, and visceral engagement with the physical world - guest edits ask creative people to share What They Did and What You Should Do.

Introducing Natasha Stagg (Substack) Surveys (2016) Sleeveless (2019) Artless (2023)

Natasha Stagg requires little introduction. Author of the novel Surveys (2016) and essay collections Sleeveless (2019) and Artless (2023), Stagg has become a defacto documentarian of sorts on the things of media, internet, art, fashion, culture, and the social, personal, and unspoken energies that surround these worlds. There is a near dazzling clarity in her work, and a presence of a strong (though not heavy handed) voice, as she explores the interweaving of glamour, the mechanics, the identities, the monetization and disillusionment, and the art of it all.

I was given a copy of Sleeveless by my parents for my nineteenth birthday, and I returned to it over and over again throughout the following years, somewhat guiltily transfixed by the glittering scenes within the pages, and more solidly drawn to an author who could navigate these scenes so adeptly, and then cut right the rotten or golden core. I like this quote from Eugenie Dalland’s 2019 review of Sleeveless in BOMB - “Stagg writes from inside an insular microcosm, but it’s one that is increasingly representative of society at large. We’re so enmeshed in these processes that we feel we have no alternative but to accept them. Stagg’s dissection of these phenomena, however, reveals our complicity in a way that implies we might have more of a choice than we think.”

With Artless, Stagg takes more distance - the things of image, screens, a potentially fictitious narrative or unreliable narrator becoming more implicit. In an interview with Los Angeles Review of Books, Stagg discusses the concept of Selling Out - “It’s so ingrained in me that you want to keep some things to yourself. But I guess what I’m more curious about is if the terms have changed, what are the things that make one look desperate?”

On her Substack, titled Selling Out, we see this exploration come to life. I enjoyed yesterday's piece on “The difference between writing and copy.” I am grateful that Natasha has shared a week in her life in the midst (on the cusp?) of terms for artists and writers changing more rapidly than ever. I am also grateful for all the magic details - the books, the clothes, the art, the food, the friends (the narcissists and the others).

WHAT NATASHA STAGG DID

Thursday, February 6^th, 2025

This week is recovery from last week, which was a Mexico City trip to visit a friend recovering from knee surgery. I flew back Monday evening and went to bed, then stayed indoors until tonight. Today is spent tying up loose ends, invoicing for small jobs, asking about pitches. Work is, as you may know, drying up for copywriters. It’s the end of an era for me, like when I quit editing a magazine a decade ago. Or is it? I got a call from someone about a new magazine, and some emails about other copywriting jobs this morning.

I want to celebrate that I’ve made it through the January after my contracts weren’t renewed and the vacation that wasn’t one and some projects that I’m new to. I want to go out. I call G and we meet on the uptown 1 platform at 7^th Avenue and 14^th Street. Meeting at a train station, even if it is the subway, is romantic due to the darting between clusters of strangers. We take the next 1 to 110^th and Broadway, then walk two blocks to Book Culture and each buy three books.

My purchases are expected, all women novelists. I buy Young Man with a Horn (1938) by Dorothy Parker because I liked Cassandra at the Wedding (1962). I buy Do the Windows Open? (1997) by Julie Hecht because I liked The Unprofessionals (2003). I buy Long Live the Post Horn! (2012) by Vigdis Hjorth because I am liking Will and Testament (2016), which was given to me by my friend with the torn meniscus in Mexico.

“I win,” says G, after we see the totals on our receipts. I’m wearing red Wolford tights, white Hanes socks, brown Bally loafers, a grey Joseph pencil skirt, a white cashmere Joseph sweater over a grey Hanes tank top, and a white cashmere scarf and black leather coat, brands of those unknown, mostly vintage (obviously). It's colder than I expected but I want to commit to the four mile walk through Central Park to the 6.

We stop at Whole Foods for a hiker’s sausage because it’s obvious when I’m starting to get hungry, and the plan is a chicken sandwich at the York all the way down on Avenue B and 11^th Street. The skyline, folded into clouds beyond the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir at night, a few stars even visible in the sky, is worth the iciness.

At the bar, we order Guinness, then a Campari and soda with an orange slice for me. “A ranch?” the bartender asks, and then looks down, noticing I’ve devoured my sandwich, nothing left to dip in ranch dressing. “O-range,” I say, after making a joke about a sidecar for my summery drink.

Friday, February 7^th, 2025

After a normal morning of working and texting, coffee and showering, I dress in APC blue jeans, a black Muji turtleneck, a black Eckhaus Latta cardigan, white socks, a black DKNY leather coat, and the same shoes and scarf as yesterday. I put a book, Eckhaus Latta sunglasses, my headphones, my keys, and my wallet in a black leather Bally tote and walk to K’s apt, picking up a second coffee on the way.

We take the bus together down to 99 Canal Street. We haven’t seen one another in, what, months? She’s been abroad. Colleen Allen is presenting her new collection of velvet coats and silk dresses and ruffled undergarments on the 6^th floor, with many-paned casement windows on two walls and red candles on the ground. The clothes are beautiful on the fit model, who we know and grill about her dating life. “Your boyfriend,” says K. “Which one?” says the model.

After some meeting and congratulating—editors, publicists, the designer—we walk two blocks to Dimes and each get a BLT, with one side of potato salad to split. The bartender comps K’s drinks. We intend to get the bus back up to the space between our apartments but end up walking because it’s sunny and brisk and there is still so much to catch up on: relationships and trips and the new ways to make money out there.

We stop in Ellen Shop at 123 Ludlow because K wants to say hello to Ellen. I buy some Armani Jeans blue jeans; she gets a red Fiorucci dress. She’s off to Connecticut to visit our friend S and I’m back at my place, working and watching reality TV and then it’s already dark and I’m asking if E will be at this party tonight. Yes, early. Okay, I’ll go, but it’s in Chelsea, so I’ll take a car. It starts at 9pm, which means no dinner, so I eat whatever is stocked in my kitchen: a can of vegetable soup, a kid-sized bag of fruit snacks, an entire mango, sliced tomato with dill hummus, and a handful of pecans.

The party is in an artist’s studio, the 9^th floor of a narrow building. I’m in a vestibule with about a dozen French people for a few minutes before someone figures out the door code and we take the small elevator in batches up.

Framed posters of the artist’s museum exhibition announcements and many coats on many pegs welcome us, in hot pink lighting. White and pink and heart-shaped mylar balloons on ribbons are in every corner. Ikebana arrangements are on every banquet table. There are halved red cabbages stuck with salami slices on toothpicks, cones covered in berries, platters of cheese-stuffed dates and prosciutto, cases of champagne, a punchbowl of cider and cranberries and apple slices, bottles of mezcal, and red paper cups. Eventually, there are two sheet cakes printed with photos of the artist’s work. This is a party celebrating a new show, the artist’s first at a large gallery nearby.

Someone tells me the punch is spiked with ecstasy, then takes it back, saying that someone else had fooled her with the same remark. She points to a carved bottle stopper, a tiny woman’s face, and says she never steals from parties, but might take that.

There are big windows facing North and South, a well-organized area of elaborate paint brushes, a room with a drafting table and wall calendars for every month of this year (all blank) attached to a kitchen that is off-limits. There is a small stage, where the artist’s husband, a composer, sings some Middle Ages-sounding songs while playing a stringed instrument on his lap. The artist, in a laminated leather minidress and spike heels, turns on a fog machine. We are quiet for the performance.

A DJ takes over and plays Donna Summer. A man who tells me we met five years ago says he sometimes remembers that he likes music, after all. Regarding the song, he brings up the artist’s age; I hadn’t realized that she’s about a decade older than her husband. I see a few friends, the music gets louder, some people start to dance. I take a car home.

Saturday, February 8^th, 2025

I wake up before nine but stay in bed texting and reading and then somehow, it’s already noon and I need to shower and dress—my new Armani jeans, Hanes white socks, a white Petit Bateau T-shirt, a black wool Maiden Name quarter-zip, and the same coat, shoes, scarf, sunglasses, and bag as yesterday. There is no other way to make it to the Eckhaus Latta runway show, at the new gallery 15 Orient (at 72 Walker Street) than by car.

My seat is taken by a woman with a baby, so I find an empty seat next to a friend, and we talk about the party last night. The show notes were written by K and are brilliant; I text her to say so. She had a day to finish them, she texts from Connecticut. I can see Laurel Halo at a mixing table from where I am seated. The music starts, and we are quiet while the models, in laminated separates printed in painterly markings, reflect their gallery surroundings. I can’t stay to mingle after, I say, and run down the stairs, out to the street, and into the Canal Street station, catching an uptown yellow line train right away.

Out at Union Square, I’ll end up early to the next show, so I get a coffee and a cherry oatmeal cookie at Daily Provisions, then head to Gramercy Park. Anna Sui is at the National Arts Club, which is why I’m so eager to go. I’ve never been inside to see the Victorian Gothic Revival interior, only glimpsed it through the doors while on walks. I’m seated, surprisingly, front row, across from Rachel Feinstein, Debbie Harry, Sofia Coppola and her younger daughter, Cosima Croquet Mars, Scarlett Teresa White (daughter or Karen Elson and Jack), Chase Sui Wonders (Anna’s niece), and some other young people who look related.

In the gift bag is an ice cream float-shaped perfume bottle, the spray pump of which is a stemmed rubber cherry to be squeezed. It feels the perfect gift for A, whose birthday party starts in a couple hours.

I walk home and call my sister to see if she’ll meet me there, then somehow, I’m running late again and end up ordering a car because the bus looks like it will take too long, but regret that, because it takes just as long and costs over $20. The apartment is shaping up, a new purchase for A. Paint is still being tested on the walls in patches.

I talk to a friend who has read my Substack newsletter today. He asks me when I find time to watch so many gossipy documentaries. When I’m falling asleep, I say, although sometimes they are too interesting to let me rest. He asks if the bit about my fascination with narcissistic, spiraling women is a covert nod to someone. I laugh, because that was not the intention, but our unconscious is always doing that type of thing.

My sister brings birthday cake flavored Oreos; the real cakes are two kinds of pie. Everyone must sign the guest scroll, even the two-year-old who is collecting A’s figurines and placing them in a semicircle on the bedroom floor. I save my appetite and forgo a boiled hotdog.

I’m allowed to bring up to three guests to a soft launch of Funny Bar’s dinner service, so I take my sister and her husband. We’re somehow running late and order a car, then take the elevator down seven floors before noticing it is snowing buckets. There is a free coat check at the door.

This is my favorite spot, for now, I keep saying, because I know it will inevitably blow up. The location is horrible (on Essex, a block up from the chaotic McDonald’s) but the lighting is perfect, someone is confidently playing the piano, and my friend, the manager, is happy we’re here, insisting we be honest with our feedback.

Honestly, I love the steak, slathered with herbed butter, the baby gem lettuce, sprinkled with crème fraiche and breadcrumbs, the French fries with garlic aioli, and the butterscotch brownie sundae, served in a ceramic creamer. Everyone is happy. I have a dirty gin martini. We should go, though, if we want to make it to the Eckhaus Latta afterparty at the Russian Tea Room on 57^th Street.

We run into a friend who tells us he just got engaged. It’s a funny story involving a TSA agent finding the ring and opening the box in front of the not-yet affianced. It’s a long story, though, and now we are late, the train being our quickest option in this blizzard.

There is a line, and although we see friends coming in and out, the door feels impenetrable. Snowdrifts are falling from many stories up, threatening to ruin everything. Amanda Lepore, in red stiletto pleasers and a corseted gauze dress, is escorted out and into a car. Instead of giving it a good try, we decide to end our evening on a better note than the indignity of waiting and take a cab home.

Sunday, February 9^th, 2025

Wake up determined to do nothing all day. I read in bed, finishing The Fiery Pantheon by Nancy Lemann (1999) and getting to the halfway point of Will and Testament. I do the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle in 46 minutes. I notice that Waitress (2007), the movie written, directed, and co-starring murdered indie darling Adrienne Shelley that was later made into a Broadway musical, is on HBO Max and wonder why I’ve never seen it, so I put it on and hate it but watch the whole thing.

I eat two bowls of cereal with fresh blueberries, and later, some instant Momofuku noodles with fried vegetables added, and a few clementines. I do the dishes and take a bath and put on a sheet mask. At some point, I can hear the Super Bowl on my neighbor’s television. Near the end of it, I put it on.

All day, I am in a vintage double silk kimono with matching house shoes. I remember that G said, a while ago, “I’m worried about you; you’re not finishing any of the books you’re reading,” and almost finish the copy of Deborah Eisenberg’s Collected Stories he gave me. I believe this will make me an Eisenberg completist. I also remember my narcissistic spiraling friend (one of them) saying that I need to write the honest story, the one I don’t want to write, and start to do that.