Natasha Stagg loves to gossip. “I love that there’s a thriving gossip scene right down the road from me,” she says of the Lower East Side. I tell her I love gossip too, except I worry that I should have aged out of it by now. The Arizona-native seems immune to such trite insecurities. “I don’t know when I’m going to grow out of it. I feel like I won’t,” she says over Zoom in her East Village apartment.
In recent weeks, the downtown New York art scene — a backdrop of much of Natasha’s writing — has become a hotly debated topic on social media, though. It’s been accused of being a collection of trust fund brats masquerading as artists, full of flimsy ideas and no interiority. Natasha is disinterested in this narrative. She’s offline and just hanging out. “People love to talk about Warhol’s factory or Paris in the 20s, but you’re talking about people hanging out and doing nothing. Maybe it seems empty because there’s more of it,” she says. “I think as long as there are groups of people doing that, then that’s an art scene, right?” Plus, what’s the fun in being a cynic? “There’s good stuff happening; if somebody is sitting around and saying there isn’t, it’s because they’re faced with an emptiness. I would assume that that’s a problem for them, you know?”
Hanging out is an apt description of the atmosphere of Natasha’s writing. In 2016, her novel Surveys followed a 23-year-old-girl who becomes internet famous, widely hailed as being the first novel that astutely commented on Instagram culture. She’s also written essays for N+1 and a column for Spike magazine, while her substack, Selling Out, offers poignant and intimate commentary on the culture industry. For her day job, Natasha works as a fashion consultant, a position that often foregrounds her essays. “Writing doesn’t pay my bills. I used to only write for magazines and that was insane,” she says. “It’s completely unsustainable. I had to find another way.” Natasha candidly discusses how writing as a profession has become increasingly difficult, stating that if she were a full-time writer she might still have five roommates: “I guess the evil corporations are the only places that can help us.”
In 2020, she released her second book, Sleeveless, a series of essays about New York that was a refreshing and wry commentary on living in a city inundated with rising rents, apathetic it-girls and endless fashion trends. The book contained precise dispatches from a distorted portrait of New York living that readers had yet to see articulated with such precision. The writing is both intimate and detached, like hearing a party recounted by your most sharp-witted and well-dressed friend.
Since then, Natasha has not left the party. In her new collection of essays, Artless, she investigates conspiracies, movies and life after the pandemic. “I don’t know if it reacts to Sleeveless or is a continuation of it. But hopefully, it’s a little bit of both,” she says of the collection. It explores everything from the legacy of canceled men to wellness retreats in Tulum, all with the tenor of a narrator who is beholding it all — like Joan Didion in Slouching Towards Bethlehem without the moralizing. Natasha’s also working on a novel, due to come out in 2024.
New York City is in a perpetual state of change. Nightclubs like China Chalet and social scenes like cyberpunk fade into memory, only to be eulogized by local writers and meme accounts. She isn’t intimidated by this, only curious. “The older you get, the more you’re aware that everything changes. Sometimes, it changes drastically. Sometimes it makes you feel left out of the equation because you weren’t there guiding it,” she says. “I think mostly, if nothing changed, then it wouldn’t be interesting to live. So, why not watch things kind of implode or explode?”
In our current moment, no writer has made watching things explode seem so stylish and elegant. It’s easy to imagine Natasha as a second-coming of writers like Eve Babitz and Cookie Mueller: women-about-town who offer seductive renderings of the world around them — all with a martini glass in hand. Since she’s relentlessly on the town, I ask Natasha if she ever gets recognized: “If I go to Clandestino, two or three people will say, ‘I read your book.’ It’s nice to have the recognition, but mostly, no. Then I think to myself, I’ve never stopped anyone on the street to say I know who you are,” she says. “I really have no clue how recognizable I am. It would be interesting to know,” she says with an indifferent shrug.
In Artless, celebrities — like closing nightclubs and eavesdropping — are a fixture of everyday life in New York, bouncing from art shows to sterile fashion week events. “The beauty of social media is that it diminished the idea of celebrity, but also made the idea of celebrity broader,” Natasha says. “Everybody is a celebrity if they have friends, and their friends talk about them. Everybody has friends that talk about them because everyone talks about their friends,” she adds, smiling.
On the topic of gossip, we eventually begin chatting about Dimes Square — a polarizing art scene that has become increasingly nebulous and scattered. Natasha doesn’t feel part of it, necessarily — only a voyeur. “I’m less knowledgeable of the key players in it than I used to be,” she says. And in the end, Natasha chalks up a lot of the appeal of Dime Square to the low-stakes gossip. “The point of reading those blogs is the name-dropping aspect of it, which is hard if you don’t know any of the names. Gossip is only valuable if you know who the people are being gossiped about.”
She should know. Natasha has a penchant for name-dropping. In the introduction to Artless, she admits to toying with the idea of titling the book Namedropping. (This was not a serious consideration; she clarified to me). In one of the essays, she’s dining with Elizabeth Wurtzel. In another, she chats with Catherine Keener and Sarah Jessica Parker outside a fashion week after-party. If Natasha were any less charming and self-aware, it might come across as indulgent bragging. “I’m aware that I’m a name dropper, and it’s something I do in my personal life, too. I’ve gotten in trouble for it.” She then launches into a charming endorsement of name dropping: “What’s so bad about saying who was there? I don’t think it’s giving the person telling the story an edge. It makes them look a little like a sycophant or somebody who cares about celebrities. Everybody knows that’s true about me already.”
Natasha also has some prudent advice: sometimes it’s best to leave the party. In Artless, she writes about her decision to leave social media in a chapter called “Social Suicide”. In an age where it seems like writers and influencers are merging, Natasha has opted out entirely. “The absence of your presence looks cool, just like the amount of parties somebody shows up to can end up saying something about them,” she says. Natasha was also bothered by the performative nature of social media: “If you’re on social media, you’re looking at reactions. Those reactions are fueled by an addiction to attention and addiction to engagement,” she explains. “Like, why are my friends acting this way? Why are they this way in person and not this way online? That kind of thing really bothers me. I can see that it doesn’t bother everyone the same way. For me, it was more like a therapeutic thing.”
Toward the end of our interview, I asked Natasha about her preoccupation with film, which often punctuates her essays. In Artless, several essays explore films from Once Upon A Time in Hollywood to Winter Kills. She jokes that movies are better than writing. “I’ve always been more interested in movies than books,” she says. “My friend who is a writer likes to say movies are better because they’re writing and acting and cinematography and music. They’re everything; movies are the best.” She recently saw playwright Annie Baker’s debut film, Janet Planet, and Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla — both she enjoyed for their subtle and understated moments. “All of that really speaks to me because I think it’s what I’m drawn to as a writer, when I’m looking at stories to tell.” I asked Natasha if she would ever consider pivoting to filmmaking since she speaks fervently about it. She doesn’t think so; she’s too stubborn. “I would like to have a lot of control over them. That doesn’t seem possible with movies unless you’re writing, directing and casting all of it. That seems like out of my wheelhouse.”
Despite the disillusioned reality of living in New York today, Natasha still seems seduced by it. She loves Coney Island and the Upper East Side, speaking romantically of the neighborhoods with the optimism of a tourist. “I have a good group of friends I love to hang out with all the time. We drink and go to each other’s events and art openings.” I asked Natasha if she would ever consider leaving the city. “I would feel like a failure if I left. And that’s not really a reason to stay anywhere. It’s not exactly Stockholm Syndrome; it’s something less extreme or less manipulative. I’m aware that that’s what’s keeping me here, and I’m okay with that.” As she says this, an ambulance drives by, and the siren briefly drowns out her voice. She pauses to let it pass and then continues.
Credits
Photography Sabrina Santiago