25th Anniversary Issue Out Now
An introduction to the 25th-anniversary issue of NUVO from editor Claudia Cusano.
____
Anniversaries are a time to reflect, an occasion to celebrate. We decided that the magazine’s 25 years should be showcased in this spring edition but not dominate it. Leafing through past issues, from the very beginning up to the present, was a journey through time, with plenty of distractions.
As I flipped through the pages, so many memories resurfaced. There was the time I spent with Sophia Loren, after which my digital recorder malfunctioned while I was transcribing my interview on the flight home from London, and alas, I lost everything (I had to politely persist for a follow-up interview). For another story, I wandered the streets of New York with Adrien Brody while his mother, acclaimed photographer Sylvia Plachy, photographed the Academy Award-winning actor, capturing candid moments. And there was the photoshoot when Frank Stella evaded us after we’d shot only five frames—he told us he was going to the washroom and then slipped out the back entrance, leaving us wondering how long he needed for his bathroom break. These behind-the-scenes happenings—stories in and of themselves—are but a few of the events associated with getting the actual story.
NUVO is a magazine that has covered stage and screen, music and art, design and fashion, food and drink, travel and transport—in short, life. It is a collection of words and pictures delivered in a package that is unexpected and oblivious to trend, yet still right on trend and even in advance of it. It is thoughtful yet wonderfully out of sync with the times. I invite you to visit nuvomagazine.com frequently during the coming months, as the anniversary celebrations on our digital counterpart will take you down memory lane, highlighting NUVO’s landscape of varied territory from the years past.
Antoni Porowski, our Issue 100 cover star, is also celebrating: he’s turning 40 later this spring. But it turns out, he isn’t big on birthdays. When Porowski came on the scene as Queer Eye’s food-and-drinks guy, he was the subject of mass adoration. The TV personality, former model, celebrity home cook, and cookbook author is branching out beyond Netflix’s Fab Five with a new docuseries for National Geographic, No Taste Like Home, in which Porowski guides celebrity guests on journeys and serves up food history along the way.
Lately it feels like much of the media industry has been put through a trash compactor—newsrooms being axed by double-digit percentages, layoffs, buyouts, AI—and while print is not dead, it is not certain what form journalism will take moving forward. That said, it’s hard to improve upon the statement of purpose for NUVO that founder Pasquale Cusano asked of the original team: “I envisioned a forum to bring my love of quality to readers. I wished to start a national dialogue on quality.” Founding editor Lyndon Grove filled the magazine’s pages with insightful content. Jim Tobler made the magazine sophisticated. I direct my prayers (attributable to my Catholic schoolgirl days) to the patron saint of editors, John Bosco. The names on the masthead have been and continue to be a dedicated group of individuals. We’re a small group, but in the words of Betty Reese, “If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.”
Today’s magazine is different from yesterday, but the collection of narratives and photographs has you coming back for more, and we thank you.