Submit a tip
Do you have info to share with HuffPost reporters? Here’s how.
I’m a proud native of Los Angeles. I began traveling at an early age, moving to Japan with my Navy family, where I worked in Tokyo as a model. In 1968, when I was 18, I flew to Europe to travel overland to India. The following year, in Ibiza, I helped manage a 150-year old pirate’s house that was turned into a pension. I lived several years in Switzerland where I continued to travel and work. Back in California, I taught myself to sew and design, and worked independently for a decade designing fashions from scavenged flea market jeans, embroidered tablecloths, tapestries and bedspreads that were pleasing to the eye, tactile, and comfortable on the skin. At age 30, I began working in the commercial film industry as stylist and costume designer. I designed and manufactured my own line of felt appliquéd Christmas stockings, which were featured gifts in Neiman, Saks and other prestigious Christmas catalogues. For over 20 years I wrote books on optimal health, adrenal burnout, Chinese medicine, and weight loss with doctors and some on my own. Ready to do something else, I self published two novels, Karma, about sex trafficking, and On the Run in Beverly Hills, a fun caper/trashy novel about turning 60. My latest finished memoir Hippie Chick is a tale of my own personal path that began with the overland journey to India 40 years ago. In 2014 I founded, and am the Executive Director of, Prison Yoga + Meditation a Los Angeles based 501(c)(3) non-profit that takes yoga and meditation to those serving jail and prison sentences. My next book is Prison Yoga + Meditation for Women that I intend to distribute for free to incarcerated women throughout the United States. I continue to design under my label Nancy Deville A California Designer, and have recently invented the most functional dog coat pattern, patent pending, that I want to license to a national pet company. I live in Santa Monica on the beach with my whippet, Scarlett, where I enjoy a life of knitting addiction, reading, writing, sewing and design, yoga, meditating on the beach, hiking, traveling, and being your basic health nut.