Tim Murphy NYC Writer

Many fashion insiders were outraged when they learned that disgraced design genius John Galliano would be the new creative director at the avant-garde Maison Martin Margiela…but their outrage had nothing (well, little) to do with the drunken anti-Semitic meltdown that got him fired from Dior in 2011. Here’s the real reason the news was greeted with confusion and dismay (and, let’s admit it, more than a smidge of curiosity and excitement) by the fashion faithful.

Toplessness–and even bottomlessness!–is par for the course in European fashion editorials and ads. So why not in the U.S.? Whether it’s Kim Kardashian’s bottom or Madonna’s nipples, nakedness is still a no-no on this side of the pond, which is perhaps why this story–for Yahoo Style–elicited thousands and thousands of comments! (But before you get your hopes up…all images here have been pixilated. Waaanh!)

For Yahoo Style, now directed by Elle vet Joe Zee, fashionistas including hairstylist Harry Josh and models Natane Boudreau and Kiara Kabukuru told me why so many style folks are getting deeply into meditation. It’s helping them find peace and groundedness in a crazed, fast-moving business…and it might even be helping them become nicer people! 

For The New York Times, I had the great pleasure of sitting down with actors John Lithgow and Alfred Molina to talk to them about playing a longtime gay married couple forced to live apart in Ira Sachs’ wonderful new film Love is Strange. I was taken by surprise at the end of the interview, in a way that reflected the film’s inevitably tear-inducing conclusion. 

For this July 2014 cover story for New York magazine, I talked to dozens of gay men of all ages and races about whether Truvada, the first pill approved to prevent HIV infection, would change their feelings about sex and intimacy. This is quite a frank and also very moving story if I don’t say so myself, so brace yourself!

In chatty New York City, few topics are off the table…except, that is, the Israel/Palestine conflict. Why do New Yorkers clam up? How can we talk about this productively without escalating into words that hurt or offend? In the wake of recent fighting in the region, I talked to a wide array of New Yorkers about this for New York magazine.

I pursued this question for New York magazine in the wake of Robin Williams’ death, talking to people who grieved for him–and for Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Cory Monteith–as though they were their own loved ones. Why the intense reactions?