#58: Liana Satenstein
"No one is thinking about you, so do whatever you want with your life."
Liana (@liana_ava) is a fashion writer, consultant, and the creator of Never Worns — a closet confessional-turned-newsletter and live auction series (her last shopping event was themed after ultimate HG dream guest, Norma Kamali).
In her writing, Liana focuses not only on the garments themselves but the ways in which we move in them. Her breakdown of the styling in Unfaithful (2002) shows how an unremarkable cotton top became the film’s most erotic costume; her piece on sweat-stained activewear, cited in last month’s natural fiber activewear roundup, makes the case for a new level of gym intimacy.
Anyway, enough about clothes… here’s Liana on HEALTH!
Health Gossip with Liana Satenstein
Taurus/Cancer/Leo
Brooklyn, NY
What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?
Not feeling pressured or bullied to do something by someone. Feeling forced to do anything by an outside source wreaks absolute havoc on my body.
How would you describe your current lifestyle?
As I write this, I’m four months postpartum. He just went down for a nap. I’m doing mom stuff, which I love. I’m working…a lot. I worked for about nine years at Vogue, which I loved, but I needed to move on. Now I work for myself, and I have more time to do what I like, which includes writing whatever I want, whenever I want. I’m busy…busier than I was at an office, but I feel freer and lighter.
How do you start and end your days?
I loved cycling so much in the morning…I was having contractions on the bike…woops. I used to run at least a 5K every morning, but my body can’t handle that quite yet since I gave birth. I took up stationary cycling when I was roughly six months pregnant and couldn’t run anymore. I still ride every morning. At the end of the night, I do try to shut off and read. I should get into the habit of doing a to-do list now that I think about it...
Can you recall a moment when you became more aware of your health, or your relationship to it changed?
Around 2017, I was drinking so much that it was really gross. I was a fashion writer at Vogue, and my work began to suffer. Random mistakes. Missed appointments. Mood swings. I was also going to Eastern Europe every three months to cover the local fashion weeks. Endless flights to Tbilisi, Kyiv, and Moscow. And all over again. I’d return after a 15-hour flight to get off the plane in New York and go to the office the next day after covering shows, writing profiles, and coordinating shoots on the ground. I loved it, but I got no sleep those weeks. I eventually started to buy these massive over-the-counter Ukrainian sleeping pills that looked like Alka-Seltzer tablets just to get used to the time change, and I would turn into a zombie. I was so, so exhausted. I began to look horrible, not to mention I was horrible to be around.
I eventually started to buy these massive over-the-counter Ukrainian sleeping pills that looked like Alka-Seltzer tablets just to get used to the time change, and I would turn into a zombie. I was so, so exhausted.
During this period, I got in a huge fight with a then-significant other one night and woke up with a gross hangover. That was a wake-up call, sure, but soon after, I entered an incredibly long and arduous interview process for a position that required me to have an immaculate record when it came to THC/marijuana use. The excessive amount of alcohol I had been drinking fell into this “no-no” scope, so I basically didn’t touch anything for a year and a half. That’s really when everything changed.