I didn’t stay at 11 Howard in New York. Rather, I drew it in and breathed it scene by scene, room by room, all 14 floors of it. There was a lot of talk about it in the day, and my job was to write about it for an overseas inflight as a headwind hotel among other chic boutique properties making their names as places to see the work of established and emerging artists.
It’s a celebrated oeuvre by famed art collector and real estate developer Aby Rosen. New Yorkers know it for the Godzilla-sized mural overseen by Jeff Koons depicting the grit and glories of SoHo in blues and blacks rising skyward over the $1 pizza joints, cheesy clothing warehouses and a Chinese Restaurant.
Inside were various galleries of changing wall art – portraits and street scenes that accented sitting nook arrangements of soft velveteen armoires and reading chairs shaped for a rabbit hole adventure in wonderland, all made that much more precious by glass vases of velvet purple plum stalks and amoeboid bowls bearing golden balls. It did not surprise me that 11 Howard served as magnet for young artists and designers who came for the complimentary wine pours and heady gatherings at the end of the day. I made a curious comparison to the creative pods that would gather at Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square in my day. Different era, different money.
And the rooms were spare there, at the 11 Howard – nary a painting on the wall or sprig of green in a pot. Form was function – frills forsaken. All the colors combined into some state of white or beige … eventually.
This was not the world of Anna Delvey, née Sorokin, yet it was the world that eventually became her undoing. In New York City, the town that invented Bernie Madoff and Billions, it was hard to imagine a not so pretty, young, unknown women of unclear geography procuring a room key plus all manner of privileges without, at minimum, a legitimate credit card. New York doesn’t suffer fools. It spits them out and sends them to Vegas. A name here, a name there and maybe a temper tantrum on the side…is that all it takes? And, of course, the stolen wardrobe, the thick indeterminant accent, and the fabulist backstory.
I was not the only one in recent conversations to have read the articles on Anna and watched the Netflix series and emerged from it all with vigorous head scratching. Trying to get PayPal to reverse a charge or the cable company to actually deliver the service I was paying for – that is the world that I and most people I know inhabit. But Neff Davis, the real life concierge (yes, we must make these distinctions these days) of 11 Howard who befriended and enabled the real/fake Anna Delvey, later told reporters that it is easy to miss such details as solid credit card numbers in a place where New York’s finest bohemians, crazies and flaming narcissists converge for cocktails. The more Anna passed the Benjamins the more Neff, an aspiring screenwriter in her off hours, kept the inside tips and VIP perks coming. Hooking up with a charming con artist does have its up sides – Neff made some solid connections in Hollywood through series producer Shonda Rhimes.
Perhaps 11 Howard was waiting for an Anna. Perhaps it needed one. Nearly everyone who came under the spell of the can-do fake heiress – except for the banks, hotels and air company owners and a few smitten, bitten friends – stood to gain by her presence. There were parties to attend, mega-yachts to sail, precious pools to plunge, high profile acquaintances to Instagram. Being in Anna’s orbit was a lucrative business. But why?
She was not overly stunning nor thin and tall enough to be a fashion goddess. She was not particularly educated or well-spoken or expert on affairs other than what’s hot and who’s not. Is simply having a scene-stealing dream and repeating it over and over enough to make it happen? Certainly, devotees of Law of Attraction principals or then Joseph Goebbels or Frank Luntz, and perhaps rabid followers of Donald Trump would say it’s the secret sauce. In an all-Instagram-all-the-time world, anyone can be the next anything. Bank accounts be damned.
So, it is with surprise, even to myself, that I admire Anna Delvey. She simply decided what she wanted to be and manifested it from thin air, no skills nor pedigree required. And perhaps a world of people so caught up in image projections, brands, FOMO and loose money needed an Anna Delvey to show them how it is done – some foreign intrigue, smooth blond hair and Russian bullying talent along with access to other people’s credit cards — and the world can be yours on a Frank Stella-painted platter. Whom among us has not been taken in by a clever con? And lived to tell the tale, often at dinner parties….
As one con becomes another in this fake it ‘till you make it era, it’s hard to feel sorry for the banks that let the Anna Delvey moment work its magic. But for the cast of characters she amassed, the Anna effect is just getting started – books, articles, movies, consultation fees, and for the 11 Howard, a PR whirlwind that even a 150-foot Koons-designed mural could not muster.
Photo by Ilene Perlman
Leave a Reply