It's a gray morning and Chloë Sevigny is hungover. Last night's plans included a friend's birthday dinner at a place where the food was bad but the martinis were three. Lately, she's been making more of a concerted effort to go out, but is not, by her own admission, getting very far. "A big night out for me is, like, dinner at Lucien," she says, trying her best to sound uncool, failing spectacularly.
Things are moving slowly. It doesn't help that the sky is pallid in a midwinter New York City way, and the rain is unending in a hopeless way, and also it's cold. Her toddler needs to be at preschool by too-early a.m. The martinis are still being metabolized. But they do not stop, have never stopped, Sevigny from rising. She gets her son dressed — a fisherman's knit underneath plaid overalls and black quilted boots seems appropriate, given the weather — and walks him to preschool, walks back home, gets back into bed, snoozes only briefly, and rises again. And then she takes a shower.
Sevigny, 48, washes her hair with Five Wits shampoo and conditioner, the house blends of the East Village salon Blackstones. The owner, Joey Silvestera, is a friend of Chloë, which is kind of like saying someone is a "friend of Dorothy" as a code for belonging to a particular echelon of New York-based creative talent. (Some of them also know Dorothy.) Over three decades of working simultaneously in New York's film, television, and fashion industries, Sevigny's rare combination of traits — extremely kind and unbearably chic — has amassed an extraordinarily talented group of individuals around her, like cool downtown flies to cooler downtown honey.
But some mornings in the shower she switches over to Christophe Robin, which is French and costs slightly more than a hair product ever should because it was recommended by another friend, Jenna Perry, who does her color around the corner on West Broadway. "She does Bella Hadid," Sevigny says, by way of approval. Sevigny describes her hair color as "fake-natural" blonde but does not offer an explanation for that term. Instead, she delights in the term "base bump," which is what Perry calls Sevigny's standard blonding procedure — just lifting the color at the roots.
"She's really sexy. She floats around. Really cute staff," Sevigny says, again, by way of approval. "She's in all the magazines."
Sevigny's legs are still peeling from a winter holiday sunburn, so she sands them down with a tile-size washcloth and lathers them in one of the several tiny soaps she borrowed — "or maybe just took" — from the hotel in the Cayman Islands where she spent New Year's. "Before we went, I was like, I'm gonna stop eating bread and not drink as much so I can get like," her voice goes briefly villainous, "bikini-ready. We get down there, and the two other 'celebs' on the beach are Em Rata and Bella Hadid. What was even the point?"
At the end of her shower, she does a quick rinse in ice-cold water. "It's like a cold plunge. To close your follicles," she says, with the confidence of a lecturing astrophysicist. Frequent readers of Allure may recognize this as Skin Care Myth #1, but I don't challenge her. Then it's body lotion (Caudalie Vinotherapist Body Butter), moisturizer (Augustinus Bader The Cream), and enough makeup to appear to not be wearing any. Her hair is still wet when preschool lets out and the family is soon gathered at a café a few blocks from home for a late breakfast that becomes this interview.
Sevigny considers her face too big or too masculine. The objective truth is that she is casually gorgeous, her features harmonizing like the full-throated belts of a barbershop quartet. She is just wearing some mascara on her upper and lower lashes (Maybelline Great Lash, her favorite), which she says helps pull focus from her dark circles, and a little blush on her cheeks (Chanel Les Beiges Sheer Color Stick), which could just be for fun.
Her husband, the gallerist Siniša Mačković, wears all black and has terrific eyebrows. Sevigny, meanwhile, finds herself being terrorized by her biggest fan — her son, Vanja, age two and nine months, who pinballs across the aisles of the café while his parents finish their breakfast, conduct an interview, or both.
"Mommy is not a jungle gym!" Sevigny gently reminds Vanja — he is trying to summit her, but cannot get past Base Camp 2. Her eggs arrive in a comically tiny skillet as she and her husband briefly strategize on a way to pacify Vanja before his 1:00 nap. Maybe the library?
Days after we meet, Poker Face, the Rian Johnson-created detective series that stars Natasha Lyonne and features Sevigny, will premiere. "Natasha is my best friend in real life," she explains, "and they said the caliber of actors they were getting for these guest spots was…" she trails off politely, but the sentence could have ended with "pretty freaking high" — Adrien Brody, Cherry Jones, and Hong Chau also appear.
In her episode, Sevigny plays in a washed-up metal band whose drummer's murder is solved using Doc Martens-related forensics. "I read the episode and I'd never played a part like that," she says, which is enough of a rationale for trying anything. Indeed, Sevigny has only lived the part, having been the roadie on friends' tours through bumfuck nowhere playing rooms of two people. But her character had to be an organic creation, she points out: "I have a lot of friends in the music biz, but not a lot of wash-ups or one-hit-wonder types."
She's also in post-production for a performance piece she directed starring the drag star Lypsinka, shooting season two of Ryan Murphy's Feud in 20th-century socialite drag as C.Z. Guest, and "producing some things for some friends." What is producing, exactly? "A lot of favors, for the most part." She stresses that she does not like to do it. "I'd rather just be the creative. But I have some friends who need a little help, so if you have a name, if you attach yourself as an executive producer to things, it'll draw attention, and give things a little boost."
Though they are not fun and she would rather be doing almost anything else, Sevigny seems genuinely happy to perform these kinds of favors. In 2003, when Jimmy Fallon — an up-and-comer, who couldn't book a guest to save his life, and a sleeper friend of Sevigny's — covered David Letterman's desk, Sevigny was willing to sit and endure his nervous charm. And Régime des Fleurs, the boutique fragrance label of Alia Raza (a friend of Sevigny), may have died of obscurity if a celebrity spokesperson hadn't intervened. "I got to make a perfume, but I also wanted to help them grow their brand, and I did, like, more press than I've ever done for anything in my life." She lets out a hearty, serotonin-inducing laugh. "It was insane." But what's an extra 20 interviews if each one helps a pal make a buck, or tens of thousands of them, or helps to build a carpeted stairway to the next valence of fame? What else are friends for anyway?
Sevigny doesn't like to wear foundation or concealer. She prefers the "rugged" quality of her natural skin tone, which in turn glows uninhibited, pouring from her cheeks. All of this rosy, natural color seems to vanish in an instant when I suggest that a manicure might make for a fun interview activity.
If the scene were a movie starring Chloë Sevigny, it would be clear to the audience from her expression that this is not something she wants to do. Some audience members might even wonder if it is the number one thing she wants to not do — such was the immediacy and clarity with which her reaction was telegraphed. Audiences across the world are shocked when she says, "Sure."
She gazes at her nails wistfully, as if saying goodbye before they are lost forever. She's trying to remember which shade of Essie's 40 pale pinks was painted on her for Feud. She is also buying time in case I change my mind, or my body is raptured to heaven, freeing her for the afternoon. Then she looks at my nails, which are too unfortunate to describe here. Then she looks at me. "I think you need a manicure."
It's settled. We locate our umbrellas and bound into the terrible afternoon.
After years of inhaling fashion magazines, Sevigny is chronically unable to name an article of clothing without also crediting its brand and provenance. The question, "What are you wearing?" yields a totally complete response: a reconstructed rugby shirt crafted by the stylist Haley Wollens (friend of Chloë) for the Lower East Side boutique Big Ash; patent leather loafers by Kenzo; a buttoned leather jacket stolen from Comme des Garçons by way of her husband's closet; and Glenn Martens for Diesel jeans that are skyscraper-long and freeway-wide and, on this morning, soaked up to the ankle in New York City puddle water. In context, it does look like a design feature.
Is she excited by the current state of fashion?
"No."
She briefly reconsiders. She likes the new Margiela, J.W. Anderson's Loewe. She watches what the kids who go to high school on her block wear — right now it's "big pants, tiny tops, and brown shoes." She loved the clothes she saw in Washington Square Park during that first tourist-less pandemic summer. A few decades ago, she was a part of the youth spectacle in the Square. She eventually came to the attention of Larry Clark and Harmony Korine, who would cast her in her first role as a teen living with HIV in Kids.
The movie hadn't yet been released when The New Yorker came knocking. The novelist Jay McInerney followed Sevigny to St. Marks Place, the boutique where she worked on Lafayette, to the club Tunnel (where Kids was filming), to the club Tunnel again (just for fun). The resulting story, "Chloe's Scene," served as an official canonization into the "It girl" pantheon. The comparisons to Twiggy and Edie Sedgwick, as well as McInerney's pronouncement that Sevigny was "the coolest girl in the world," stuck fast.
The main thrust of the story is how a girl from Connecticut walked right into the center of the universe. "Chloë can speak with some confidence about what's happening in the street," McInerney wrote. "Some say Chloë is what's happening in the street."
Richard Avedon shot Sevigny for the story, but the photo never ran. Instead, he gave her a print, along with a piece of modeling advice: You should only be photographed from your left side. "Can you imagine saying that to a 19-year-old?" she asks, still disbelieving. A few years later, on set with David Bailey for British Vogue, he told her the same thing. Sevigny projects the kind of confidence that might have told both of them to fuck off in perpetuity. But sometimes, a comment can be so unexpectedly sharp, it can cut deep, stay lodged in the hippocampus for a lifetime.
"Even right now, I would have preferred to sit in that seat because then you would have been looking at my left side." A cursory scroll through her Instagram confirms this preference. "It informs so many parts of my life, like, when I go to dinner, when I'm rehearsing and blocking a scene, I always favor this side. It's intense. I read this book called The Broken Mirror about body dysmorphia because I feel like I might have…" Her voice falters to a whisper and then disappears like smoke.
Sevigny has appeared in over 70 films and TV shows. She is more than well-acquainted with the aesthetic demands of show business. (When her burgeoning career as a child actor and model coincided with the loss of her canine teeth, Sevigny had a bridge made that she could pop in for auditions.) It's not uncommon for actors to get veneers and has in fact become something of an industry standard for on-camera talent of all kinds. Still, Sevigny didn't even think about getting her teeth done until she was 29, until she was drunk outside Sway, until her friend was swinging her by the arm and let her go too soon, until she tried to brace herself, until the immediate trip to the ER. Also, she was wearing Balenciaga by Nicolas Ghesquière.
Sometime after the incident, a visit to Dr. Michael Apa, perhaps New York's finest veneer installation specialist, restored her grin. (Apa is, of course, a friend of Chloë — the two even went on a couple of dates back in the day.) She has come a long way from not thinking about teeth. Watching the Golden Globes, she found herself distracted by what appeared to be a parade of unfinished ceramic projects. "This high-def TV is not doing anybody any favors. Even the young people," she says. "You can tell when people have uppers but don't have lowers."
"It's too hard to get old onscreen. It's not fun. I'm not opposed to bits and bobs here and there." Mostly Botox and filler, she specifies, and mostly on the right side of her face. In a wordless maneuver on the way to the drying station, we end up swapping seats.
Sevigny finally admits that, no, she did not want to get her nails done. Our 20 combined fingers are being blasted with cool air. "Now that I have a baby, going and doing things like this makes me feel anxious." Not that she was ever a regular at the nail salon, but she did used to love going to Juvenex, the erstwhile 24-hour spa in Koreatown, for a soak and sauna. Now, all that she needs to feel elementally at peace is waiting at home.
It's still raining when we emerge into the afternoon gray. Sevigny's apartment is just around the corner. She gestures down an unexpected street and begins naming all her neighbors: “Hilton Als, Mark Ronson, Louis C.K., Dasha Nekrasova — ”friend of Chloë," — from the Red Scare podcast and Succession. And the blonde woman from Succession, too" (J. Smith Cameron).
Nobody approaches Sevigny for a photo or an "I loved you in Big Love!" Instead, everybody looks at her for a second too long, either searching for her name in their mind's IMDb or simply delighted at the sight of Chloë Sevigny in her natural habitat of downtown Manhattan. A knit balaclava frames her face, lashes shooting forward.
We're approaching her block when Sevigny shouts, unprompted: "Things I can't live without!" It's the last 60 seconds of the interview and she is trying to do me a favor by asking herself a question I neglected to ask and then making a verbal list of her answers: Weleda Skin Food, the Tatcha face mist and serum stick, Rosebud salve. "If I leave the house without my Rosebud salve, I panic," she says, honking with laughter. She knew I would want to know. Isn't that the whole point? Doesn't everybody?
Fashion stylist: Becky Akinyode
Hair: Joey George
Makeup: Yumi Lee
Manicure: Sonya Meesh
Top photo: JW Anderson bodysuit. Patricia Von Musulin jewelry. To create a similar makeup look: Metal Play Pigment Palette in Foil Play, Sweet Cheeks Creamy Powder Blush Glow in Fig, and Smooth Whip Matte Lip Cream in Snuggle Sesh by NYX Professional Makeup.
