Ana Finel Honigman

I popped Downtown Girl Uptown World's cherry when I featured my friend Colleen Nika. I then asked her to recommend another gem of a female for this site, that is how I came about Ana Finel Honigman. She and I became insta-cyber buddies. I then started to read her fashionably intelligent contributions to the bible of Style.com. The next thing I noticed her divine presence appearing randomly on the eccentric Diane Pernet's side (how excitingly chic)!!! So naturally when I went to pick up this season's Lula Magazine my pretty little head was overjoyed to read Ana Finel Honigman's name on the masthead as a contributing editor. I slammed a twenty on the counter and ran off in my sparkle jellie mary-janes back home. I was super giddy when I got to page 200 so I could read her article in Lula's 10th issue! So read ahead my dear audience and embrace the essence of the lovely trans-atlantic journalist Ana Finel Honigman!!!

Photography Maxime Ballesteros , jacket is from THE CENTAUR, necklaces by Harakiri, ring by Loved To Death

Around the world girl

Ana Finel Honigman

World Traveler/Compulsive Writer/Fashion Intellect

-Downtown Girl or Uptown Girl?

AFH: Left-town now, since I live in Berlin. I was born on the Upper West. I lived in Tudor City after graduating Sarah Lawrence but spent all my time in L.E.S and the Brooklyn normal hipster haunts. However, my mother teaches at Columbia and lives on York but she's one of the only ladies in her area with her organic face still untouched. So, I guess that means that I am a pretty standard Manhattan mutt.

-Where do you live and why?

AFH: I live in Berlin's Mitte. It is pretty much like Park Slope. I can't think of any reason to live anywhere else. It's so comfortable here. It's cheap, green, vibrant, friendly and easy. Berlin is a totally unpretentious, non-superficial, nurturing and young but culturally mature city. I occasionally miss New York's flash and I miss my parents enormously, but I've been away from home so long that I don't totally connect to it anymore. I was living in Oxford and London for the past seven years. I hated England. When I started visiting Berlin, I realized that the constant bitterness, frustration and underlining rage that I felt in my daily UK life evaporated. I rarely get lost here. I ride my bike everywhere. I have such great health care that I almost feel guilty for not being sick more often. I work constantly. I do pilates regularly. I have loads of international friends and we're all on the same wonky schedule. It's perfect. However, I don't speak a word of German - so my opinion might change if I actually understood the strangers around me.

-Best place to grab a cocktail?

AFH: Anywhere with an open bar works for me. But I actually don't drink cocktails too often. I just drink way too much wine. And I pretty much live at my local - Torstasse's Neu Odessa bar. I end up there a few nights a week with my best friend David Nicholson, who uses it like his living room. It is either there or Bar Drie, Berlin's artists' watering hole. Almost everyone else who I like tends to drop into these two bars, so that it all has a nice homey feel - if home were a soggy, blurry, ashtray with great music and cool chat.

-Best place to brunch?

AFH: Since I am such a creature-of-habit, I always find a spot and don't stray. In New York, Cafe Gitain was my canteen/ office. It was nowhere near my home but I had all my interviews, lunches with friends, dates or long dinners there. I found a sweet little organic Greek restaurant in Oxford to serve the same all-purpose role. I even have a cafe in Seoul - Miel Cafe. For Berlin, my home is Cafe Fleury where I go daily to eat a Salade Bleu, with no dressing, with my fingers while chirping to David, my students or whomever else I can lure there.

-Tell us what you do.

AFH: I write. Writing is pretty much my primary activity. I am almost compulsive about it. I got seriously yelled at by a furious friend for sending email-length text messages yesterday. I actually worry whether I have some light Hypergraphia. I usually file something for publication each day. I cover fashion, style and art for print and online magazines including British Vogue, TANK, Art in America, V,Vman, Dazed&Confused, Artforum.com, Bookforum, Style.com, The Daily Beast and The New York Times on-line. I occasionally also curate for Saatchi Online and I am also struggling to finally submit my PhD thesis to Oxford University. I finally have an incentive since I just started teaching a class titled "Intro to Reality: Art World Institutions in Context" with the New York University's Steinhardt School semester in Berlin program. All the students are studio art majors and they are just a joy to know. They are all such smart, engaged, thoughtful and delightful people. I never knew why I was doing a PhD or that I had anything near to a maternal instinct. But, I actually care about these kids like crazy. I worry when they call me while riding their bikes in the rain. I've hooked them all up with internships here and I meet with at least one a day for coffee to discuss their projects and work. It's great. I just cant wait to see what they do.

-What is the hardest thing about writing and what is the best?

AFH: I honestly love every part of the process except for writing the endless emails to some editors to chase payment. The poverty is the hardest part. That and the fact that few people understand the time,inspiration and creativity required to write non-fiction. Even though I do have an idea for a novel, I am still annoyed when people assume that I would rather be writing fiction. I find criticism or even snappy on-line blurbs to be creative and often really rewarding. It's just deeply gratifying to feel like I've found my words to describe and hopefully enrich the meaning of something.

-Will you ever write a fiction novel or a script for a movie?

AFH: I have never experimented with fiction. But I actually do have an idea for a novel and I am really eager to write a solid investigation into all these fashion weeks that I attend. I want to do something modeled after Sarah Thornton's brilliantly sharp, charming and insightful "Seven Days in the Art World." Instead of examining how art functions in its context, my aim is comparing and contrasting fashion week events and fashion scenes in the cities away from what Amanda Fortini called “the axis’s of influence.” I've been invited to fashion weeks in both Abuja and Tbilsi this year. i haven't gone to either. But I have become intimate with the scenes in Seoul, Sao Paolo, Copenhagen, Berlin, Montreal and a few other spots around the world. There is a massive range in scale, scope, talent and ambition in these places but what interests me is that these radically diverse cities feel that they have a need for a "fashion week." A book is the only way to properly pick it all apart.

-Give us your top 5 must read sites daily!

AFH: I'm pretty stodgy about my reading. For me, it's The New York Times, FT.com (on Saturday), Artforum.com, Saatchi Online, Style.com, Interview's blog and Diane Pernet. The classics.

-Tell us about your style? Do you have any favorite designers?

AFH: My style veers towards grown-up goth mixed with what my best friend called a "biblical whore" aesthetic. I still slip into a disheveled semi-sixties style but I try to stop dressing too much like a ceramics teacher. I will be eternally grateful to my best female friend in Berlin, the artist Cecile Evans,for vetoing long flowing skirts and putting me into tiny minis. People are just so much nicer when you're wearing a teeny skirt and heels. It ironically makes life so much more comfortable. However, my style is definitely not sweet or too accessible. I almost exclusive wear things made by people whom I know and like. I am pretty loyal with what I wear. I only buy Costume National, Alexander McQueen or Margiela shoes. And, I gravitate to macabre but sculptural and sleek accessories like Aoi Kotsuhiroi's rings of magnificently muted, ghost-like crystals enveloped in tendrils of black string and human hair, my dear friend Nina Stotler's necklaces from nuts and bolts from her Von Kottwitz line, a ring by Loved to Death made from a real human tooth and the silver cast rat and baby bird skull pendants that my friend Mireille Boucher made me from her amazing Harakiri line. As for actual garments, I am almost never without the black leather jacket that my friend Jen Gilpin, of Berlin's "Don't Shoot the Messengers," made me or the jacket seen in these photos taken by Jen's boyfriend Maxime.That blazer was made for me by Ranji Ye, a Korean designer, whose work for her label THE CENTAUR moves me immensely. I can't remember when I last went into a shop and bought something. If it's not somehow intimately related to me, then it better be really warm or handy.

-What can we expect from you in the future?

AFH: My main goal is to finally get free from this albatross-like PhD soon. Then I want to write this fashion book and actually attempt that novel. I'll definitely keep teaching and writing constantly too.

My friend Mark Rickerby is building me a website right now. It will just be anafinelhonigman.com and it'll be ready in late May. I'll have a blog on it and I'll be posting weekly exclusive interviews, spotlights on items, exhibitions, artists or designers and a regular diary. I want a homebase while I'll still post elsewhere. I really hope it'll be interesting. Maxime is taking portraits of me tomorrow and Mark's design is just flawless. I cant wait to start it.

-Give us advice on romance...

AFH: Send me your stories. I would love to add Agony Aunt to my roster of writing activity!