The digital era has welcomed a new wave of information consumption, where a headline’s allure often dictates whether a piece is read, shared, or lost in the vast sea of content. The pressure to craft attention-grabbing titles has intensified, sometimes overshadowing the significance of the content within. Yet, amidst this trend, something refreshing is happening — writers are actively striving to embrace substance over sensationalism. Our latest Cool Face of Bastet Noirhas managed to break through this barrier, and position herself in the creative fields as someone that values mind-challenging information above anything.
Davina Catt’s multifaceted career spans journalism and filmmaking, showcasing her diverse talents and contributions to the arts and culture landscape. Davina is currently a contributing editor for Vogue International editions, she’s also written for the likes of the Evening Standard, Interview magazine and was a features editor for biannual title, Violet magazine, alongside notable public figures in London and the United States. If you’d like to get to know Davina a bit better, keep on reading.
Who is Davina Catt?
Writer, Editor, storyteller, former model.
What’s your morning routine like?
I am a routine-type person — I find it keeps me in the ‘right’ mindset so my mornings are quite regular. Wake with coffee, complete a visualisation meditation with my vision board at hand to help manifestation practices, answer backlog of emails before getting going with the day — in this strange, ‘doom scrolling,’ fear driven world we are living in, I am trying to focus on keeping that little space for magic in my day, ‘the work of magic is this, that it breathes and at every breath transforms realities.’ (Rumi)
Your words as a journalist and editor have been published in esteemed publications such as Vogue.com, British Vogue, Financial Times, Observer, and The Evening Standard, just to name a few! What topics would you say are your favorite to deconstruct and what does the writing process look like for you?
In a world of so much soundbite, I enjoy doing larger interviews the most, particularly with actors getting into character for roles — and really exploring the layers of identity that go into that process. I am old school in that I transcribe everything myself (rather than by apps that do it automatically) as the only way I can write a feature is if I have gone back through the interview material from start to finish.
Apart from being a talented editor, you are also a writer and director, having made an independent documentary film called ‘The Safehouse: A decline of ideas’ about the history of British public libraries and their current demise. What inspired this and what were some of the biggest challenges you faced while working on it?
My grandfather was a film producer in the golden era so I have always been seduced by the power of film and wanted to write a script. At the time when this project came about, social media was really taking off and I was fed up by the lack of ‘truth’ driven writing/journalism around — it was all just captions and noise. I think that is the power of documentaries and why they have been having such a renaissance recently — as they are about seeking truths and allow for discourse around a subject in the binary times that we are living in.
Three things you wish you knew before starting out?
I started out before the mammoth changes we’ve seen in the last 8 or so years (and Instagram) and I still can’t believe how much the landscape/world has come on for women in such a short space of time: back then I wish I had had more confidence to know
You don’t get if you don’t ask
Know your worth (particularly surrounding money)
Never waste a second (or let things like self-doubt, insecurity, fear dictate) because as much as it’s a cliche, time really does go by so fast.
Biggest setback in life and what you’ve learned from it?
TIME: Due to private/personal reasons, I lost a large chunk of time out of my life, which has been completely out of my control. I grapple with it every day — the rollercoaster of emotions from anger, injustice, grief and so forth — but I have found solace through the teachings of manifesting coaches, quantum physics experts, neuroscientists who can explain this crazy universe we live in via atoms, energy, consciousness and time is really just a construct :)
Books that changed your life
I am a book fanatic so it’s hard to narrow it down! For me, books are like stored memories and represent passages of life: certain novels and narratives will trigger who I was and what stage of life I was at when I read those books, so in that way they are like mini time portals. As a small child I was obsessed by all things Enid Blyton (I had a full circle moment during the making of my documentary, when interviewing Stephen Fry he too mentioned picking up Enid Blyton books from his local library), later I loved The Go Between by L.P Hartley, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion,Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Rilke, and The Lonely City by Olivia Laing. As I get older I think my book choices have subconsciously veered away from narrative and storytelling to titles that dissect and evaluate the human experience : I came across ‘In Defence of Witches: Why women are still on Trial’ on the Chanel Book Club podcast recently, which is a fascinating examination of the female experience and how societal conditions first emerged for women, dating back to the Salem witch trials in the 16th century. I also read Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning during the traumatic time of the pandemic, it’s a book that is always valuable to pick up in tough times since the author managed to survive the greatest atrocity of mankind in the 20th Century.
Favorite female empowerment speech
I have no idea if she wrote the speech or not but Emma Watson spoke at the UN awhile back and used the phrase ‘If not me, who? And if not now, when?’ — this has really stuck with me as someone that questions myself a lot. I find repeating the phrase if I am working on something that is pushing me out of my comfort zone is the fastest way to negate fear and shift my mindset forwards!
Singer Courtney Love was interviewed a few years ago for a magazine I was working on; she eloquently spoke about anger and how it’s still not deemed as ‘female’ to express anger, how anger is still deemed an unacceptable emotion for women — and how she wants to decimate that antiquated notion.
I also really like something Sophia Loren said about age-ing: along the lines that if you ‘can find acceptance you will live in the present and age gracefully,’ and also that life is all about bringing in your own dreams and staying curious to ‘something bigger than oneself’.
What’s in your Bastet Noir cart?
Apart from the Connie Coat which I am wearing, I would go with the Jerri Maxi Skirt in Black and the Maiara Dress.
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