Chloë Sevigny is the subject of January’s twenty-questions feature in Playboy. She’s a noted fashion plate, and the Times credited the woman with making the Elaine Benes look fashionable in a story Sevigny even offered comment for. Apparently, even though she submitted to that interrogation, she was probably annoyed by it.
PLAYBOY: In a 1994 Jay McInerney New Yorker article you were crowned the “It girl” and “the coolest girl in the world.” Did having style help or hurt?
SEVIGNY: I guess it helped more than anything else. I’m glad I grew up during the last vestige of cool, in the 1990s, when everything wasn’t blogged and on the Interwebs, when things were more on the downlow and underground. I guess I am stylish, but I would rather have people come up and say “I really liked your performance in this or that” than “I really like the way you dress.” That irks me. Anyway, the term It girl gets used too loosely.
PLAYBOY: How do you mean?
SEVIGNY: Today the term is used to describe, say, Peaches Geldof—a girl who doesn’t do anything but is just sort of around. The original It girl was the 1920s movie star Clara Bow; then, in the 1960s, with Edie Sedgwick and Warhol, It girls turned into socialites, ladies of leisure—people who had “it” just for being “fabulous.” But Edie was just a rich drug addict, and when I got called the It girl everyone thought I was that too. I looked like a junkie because it was the 1990s and grunge was the fashion. But I felt I was doing stuff, not just being a socialite.
Sevigny admits that she has done drugs, but notes in the interview, “I don’t think I ever bought anything; it was just sort of there.” Sometimes we wonder if that’s how a lot of actresses approach getting dressed these days.
CHLOE SEVIGNY: 20Q [Playboy via BlackBook]
