What Nancy Silverton Can’t Live Without

I recently discovered popcorn. Many days, that’s all I eat — for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack, because it’s the only thing that sounds appealing. It’s crunchy. It’s salty. It’s fun to eat. I never get filled up by it. I’m on planes all the time, and it’s a great thing to have on the plane. And when I discovered the nutritional-yeast flavor on this popcorn, it won me over. The nutritional yeast has an extra element of nutrition — so therefore I eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

So in all fairness, nutritional-yeast-flavored popcorn replaced my pistachios. Prior to my addiction to popcorn was my addiction to Turkish pistachios. I buy five pound bags from Nuts.com. I would easily go through a quarter of a bag in one sitting. My dentist told me I had little teeny breaks in my teeth. And I said, “Probably from opening up pistachios.”

Antipast, which is a Japanese brand, makes beautiful decorative compression socks. You don’t feel like you’re like an old lady wearing them. For someone that’s on their feet all the time, and someone that travels the amount that I do, compression socks really make your feet and your legs feel better. And when they’re fashionable, it’s an added bonus. Noodle Stories in Los Angeles carries them. And Noodle Stories is a store I can’t live without. That is my retail therapy. I go in pretending I’m going to say hello to my friend Carol. I walk in with a purse and I walk out with giant bags. Like yesterday I went in to say hello, and I bought four new pairs of compression socks. They’re very durable, so you could really buy a couple pairs for life and never have to buy them again. But then what do you do when the new style comes out?

I’ve always hated my hair, all my life. But at one point I decided to take this thing that I hated and give it a lot of attention — to embrace it. I embraced my hatred of my hair by decorating it. When I redesigned my bathroom, which was a couple years ago, I put in a counter sink with a set of drawers on either side. The two top drawers are my clip drawers. Each drawer has six large compartments. And then in each compartment I have all different sorts of glasses or little decorative bowls with my clips inside. Let me tell you: It’s not easy. You get up and you can’t just throw something on. You gotta match your socks to your outfit, make sure you have the right glasses, and then choosing the right clips before you choose the right pearls is really a lot of work. That’s why I’m late wherever I go. It takes so long to coordinate all these things.

Hair clips are my signature, but so is my handkerchief that blots my runny eyes and itchy nose. I order them all from Liberty of London, and they’re all floral. I definitely have at least 25 at all times. I always have one in my hand. And there’s always one in reserve in my purse because I lose them all the time. You know most people have that feeling when they stick their hand in a pocket and come out with a $5 bill, they feel like they’ve hit the jackpot. For me, it’s when I wear a pair of pants I haven’t in a while and I’ve got a Liberty handkerchief in there.

I like to think of myself as a hoarder, but a very, very organized hoarder. When I travel, everything of mine is in cubes and things like that because it makes it so easy to pack and unpack. I have the perfect container from Muji for every single thing — toothbrush, toothpaste, whatever I need for my morning rituals.

I love the HexClad pepper mill because I love a pepper grinder that has a very coarse grind. I should say that with certain things, that’s not the case, like when I’m seasoning a big piece of meat. But I like a really coarse ground pepper in salad dressings. Otherwise it has the appearance of dirt. The other thing I love about the HexClad pepper mill is the weight of it. I love substantial kitchen things. Like spoons that have weight to them.

My L.A. Times subscription goes hand-in-hand with my espresso machine — the ritual of making myself a cappuccino or two and reading the L.A. Times. With those two things together, I really look forward to getting up in the morning. You know in my day, it was actually something that had a little heft, like my pepper grinder. I think I got that from my parents. They would sit at the table reading every morning and my father used to say to me, “If you’re not gonna read the paper, at least read the headlines so you know what’s going on.” I love the California section because it’s almost like there’s a little bit of gossip in there. I like entertainment. And then the front page. And this I get from my mother: Both of us are obsessed with the obituaries. So I go right to that first.

Max Pittion was actually a frame that my friend Carol from Noodle Stories was wearing, and it caught my eye. This was a handful of years ago. I like the shape. I like the thickness. It really adds a punch. It’s like the hair clips. You know, you develop a look, and then it becomes your signature. I feel almost unfinished or undressed if I don’t have a pair of glasses on. I have the sunglasses for outside and then when I go inside I put the clear ones on. None of them actually have a prescription, even though I need one. So I guess the sunglasses have a function because they block the sun, but the ones for indoors have no function whatsoever except for that they’re decorative.

I feel so bland and washed out and as soon as I put on that red lipstick, I feel alive. I’ve been wearing this tone my whole life. Just like with iPhones where they change the cords, Chanel changes the color every so often. So I just find the closest that I can. I go in person and pull them and test them. I walk away with swipes all over my arm.

The founder of SNS was actually an orthopedic surgeon. He started this shoe company with a chef and they got together because both professions need slip resistant, comfortable shoes for people that are on their feet all the time. I actually met the owner on a plane coming back from Italy one summer. Then I ran into him again, and he asked if I would collaborate on a design, which I did. That component of feeling good and stylish — whether I’m behind a stove or at a dinner party — it’s the same for me.