Chloë Sevigny

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Blue pinstripe linen top over a white Tri-State t-shirt CHLOË SEVIGNY for OPENING CEREMONY with a red felt hat SAINT LAURENT by HEDI SLIMANE

New York — New Jersey — Connecticut

interview by GLENN O’BRIEN
photography by MARK PECKMEZIAN

I met the lovely Chloë Sevigny when she was very young, but she always seemed grown up, cool and wise. She still is, of course, but now she’s vintage cool, gorgeous, refined and sophisticated. And she’s still a great actress, a muse and culture hero. I met up with her for lunch at Il Buco in Manhattan, and straightaway she took me to task for some past slight.

CHLOË SEVIGNY – You’re not going to be mean to me are you?

GLENN O’BRIEN – No, why?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – You were mean to me last time. [LAUGHS]

GLENN O’BRIEN – I was! Why?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I don’t know. I should be asking you.

GLENN O’BRIEN – Sometimes interviews just go badly for no reason. Do you know who Lene Lovich is?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Was she like a one-hit wonder?

GLENN O’BRIEN – Maybe two. Anyway, I interviewed her, and I liked her and for some reason I offered her a joint. She smoked it and then she freaked out and ran.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I can see that. I get the fear from mari-jew-ana. I wouldn’t be able to do that.

GLENN O’BRIEN – Maybe it’s more for guys.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Marijuana is more for guys? Don’t be ridiculous!

GLENN O’BRIEN – Because it’s yin. Guys are really yang, and it makes a little adjustment.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Maybe. I don’t know. In high school I was like around-the-clock. Then I hit a certain point in my life where it wasn’t working for me any more. It’s just like I had some sort of shift.

GLENN O’BRIEN – I probably would have started smoking pot when I was 14, but I couldn’t find it.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I think I was 15.

GLENN O’BRIEN – My high school was in this kind of iffy neighborhood in Cleveland, and my mother said, “Don’t walk around that neighborhood; people will try to sell you drugs.” So I kept walking in bigger and bigger circles, but nothing ever happened. Were you a good high school student?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I was not. No. I lost interest in a lot of things. I had a rough teen…rough high school experience.

GLENN O’BRIEN – Were you part of a clique?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I was part of the bad clique.

GLENN O’BRIEN – The bad clique?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Yes. And then, like, no clique, because they all graduated.

GLENN O’BRIEN – So you were the junior member of the bad clique.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Exactly. They were my brother’s clique. Later it was me sitting alone…

GLENN O’BRIEN – How much older is Paul?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Three years.

GLENN O’BRIEN – Did you dress like a bad girl?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I don’t know what really constitutes “bad girl.” Slutty is bad. Right?

GLENN O’BRIEN – We had greaser girls, who ratted their hair and carried razors. But that was a different time.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Yeah. I wasn’t like a metalhead. I don’t know if I would say I was bad, but you could probably read my ensembles as someone who was troubled. Especially the dirty greasy hair and the face … In fact, another parent called like Child Services on my parents because they thought that something was going wrong at home because I looked so troubled. It was very heartbreaking for my parents, as you can imagine.

Black voile judo shirt with red piqué stitching EDUN with black embroidered shorts and black alligator flat sandals BALENCIAGA

GLENN O’BRIEN – They saw you too.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – They did. But they were accepting. They were a lot more open-minded than other members of our community. And they had already been through it with my brother, I was kind of easy-peasy compared to him. At least I wasn’t getting arrested for writing graffiti.

GLENN O’BRIEN – Paul was a juvenile delinquent?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Uh … yeah. He had to go away to school for delinquents. He was in the city, skating and going to the hardcore matinees at CBGBs and all these clubs when he was just a kid in high school. So they shipped him off to a boarding school.

GLENN O’BRIEN – Did you have a fake I.D.?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I don’t remember having one.

GLENN O’BRIEN – That was the first artistic thing I did, making fake driver’s licenses.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – We would just drive to the other towns, like Stamford and surrounding towns that had poorer neighborhoods, and go to like the bodegas there where they didn’t care. They would sell 40 ounces to underage kids.

GLENN O’BRIEN – I used to go to the Kon-Tiki Room, which was all Polynesian waiters. They would look at white kids and not know how old they were.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – You all looked the same to them.

GLENN O’BRIEN – Yeah. So we would wear a tie, carry a briefcase and order mai-tais.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Was there a large Polynesian community in Ohio?

GLENN O’BRIEN – No. I think they brought them in specially, just to work at the Kon-Tiki Room serving pu pu platters. So tell me about your book.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – You know Martinka? She’s a free-lance editor for Rizzoli. She approached me one day and said, “What do you think about doing a book with Rizzoli?” I have some friends who had done books with them, and I had just come back from a trip to Japan, where I had seen a book that someone had done of me, without my permission, without permission from any of the photographers or anything. It was like a Chloë style-book. It was like mostly paparazzi pictures, like red carpet pictures, and it was a kind of silly, Japanesey fan-book. I thought, “Well, they’re benefitting off of this, and maybe I should think about it.” Then also, I could like reclaim my image again in the age of the Internet. If anyone Googles me … even the thought of that makes me shudder. I thought, I can compile images that I like from over the years, and present myself in the way that I would want to be seen. And she said I could kind of do whatever I wanted, and so I said “yeah.” It’s quite small. It’s 8-by-10, $32. So it’s for the kids. I didn’t want some big Carine Roitfeld-like $200 coffee table book of me. It already seemed so utterly narcissistic to make a book of yourself—to do some really expensive, huge thing seems really crazy.

GLENN O’BRIEN – Did you ever see that book of Vincent Gallo that came out in Japan?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – No, but I’d love to. I love looking at pictures of Vincent.

GLENN O’BRIEN – It’s really good. It’s the most self-glorifying book I think I’ve ever seen. It’s Vincent Gallo: 1962 – 1999. It’s not like he’s dead—it covers that period of his life. It must be hard to find. Maybe Vincent has a stash of them.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I don’t know if he would grace me with one, but perhaps I can ask. [LAUGHS]

GLENN O’BRIEN – Was there an overlap in the images from the Japanese book to yours?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – The Japanese book is mostly paparazzi, and I decided not to include any of those in my book. First of all, I don’t feel like they’re beautiful in the way that Ron Galella used to take paparazzi photos. There’s no beauty to the imagery. I liked some of my outfits, but I didn’t think they were pretty enough as an image to put in the book. Also, I don’t want to condone the walking-down-the-street papparazzi, because I find that so utterly aggravating. I used a couple from the Oscars or things like that. Like one my mom took of me on the red carpet. Mostly, it’s editorial stuff from over the years, and snapshots my friends took. So we had to go through a lot to edit down, and it was a pretty exhausting process. The worst part was that I didn’t understand how much work it was going to be! I had to track down the photographer, what the date was, and what magazine it was…

GLENN O’BRIEN – That’s probably Olivier Zahm’s fault. He had to get releases for all of his daring pictures in O.Z.: Olivier Zahm: Diary.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I think that they’ve probably been sued in the past. Trying to do that work initially myself meant Googling myself, like “Chloë with…” Formal work that I cannot subject myself to. Luckily, I had some help.

Chloë Sevigny, 2004, photo Ryan McGinley

GLENN O’BRIEN – Having your life flash before your eyes?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – God-awful. Then there were a lot of images from the ’90s, which we were trying to get as high-res scans or prints, and all the photographers from the ’90s were shooting film, so they’re like, “I don’t even know where that is; it’s in storage somewhere.” Some of the photographers were asking insane amounts, they’d have five or six pictures and wanted like $2500 per photo. I’m like, “that’s more than the art director is getting.” Everybody hears Rizzoli, and they think, “coffee table book that’s a lot of money.” It’s a $32 book. So we decided to just use tear sheets from the magazines, because I still have everything. My Mom has a really exhaustive archive of every picture I’ve ever been in, in every magazine. Some of them are frayed and stained. So that adds another texture.

GLENN O’BRIEN – I like the mix. Fun, cool, not too crazy. I said to Olivier, “It’s really impressive. Chloë’s gone through her whole career without showing her nipples.”
CHLOË SEVIGNY – [LAUGHS] No.

GLENN O’BRIEN – He said, “No-no, she did, she did!”
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I’ve been nude in a few movies.

GLENN O’BRIEN – Well, not in the book anyway.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – No, but Urban Outfitters did a huge pre-order, and they’re kind of not into nudity. Well, at least you can’t show the bottom half. Yeah, I don’t have any topless photos. I guess I have a couple from Mert and Markus…

GLENN O’BRIEN – So did Urban Outfitters cancel their order?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – No, they still ordered. But they did say you aren’t allowed to show bush.

Chloë Sevigny, Rita Ackermann, Lizzi Bougatsos, and a friend, 2004, photo Lizzi Bougatsos

GLENN O’BRIEN – But if you shave, it’s okay?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Ha!

GLENN O’BRIEN – So did you write a text?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I didn’t. I decided to have friends write it. We were going to do like an interview thing in the back, with different friends asking questions, but I didn’t want it to take on a magazine form. I thought it was better to have essays. Kim Gordon wrote one at the beginning, and my friend Natasha wrote one at the end. I couldn’t write anything myself … First of all, I’m not a writer. Second, whenever I read autobiographies I’m always kind of irritated by the tone. Do you know what I mean? I thought it would be better to have other people write. I don’t know if that’s just a copout. It just seemed like what was right for the book.

GLENN O’BRIEN – I was thinking about you the other day, because I was writing about Basquiat, and how he was 19 when he started making money and being famous, and all of his friends were poor and not-famous …That’s a big strain. Did you have to deal with that when you got Kids?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – No, I was still poor at that point. Actually, Harmony kind of funded me. I lived in his apartment and he paid for it. Then I lived with another friend. I didn’t make any money for Kids. I didn’t start making money until I did Big Love actually.

GLENN O’BRIEN – But you were famous.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I was famous. To a certain degree. I did and still do have more money than a lot of my friends. So I tend to take them out and/or help them out, buying their art or paying their rent. And I helped people with films when they’ve needed funding, and things like that.

GLENN O’BRIEN – I never made any money until I was 39. I never thought about money. Then I thought, “Oh, I’m getting old, maybe I should make some money.”
CHLOË SEVIGNY – How do people survive here?

GLENN O’BRIEN – Yeah, it’s really crazy. Noho used to be an artist-in-residence neighborhood. It was even dangerous. And now it’s all billionaires, and they don’t even live here. They just have like an apartment in case they want to go Christmas shopping or there’s a revolution in their country. How do you like living in Brooklyn?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I’m adjusting slowly. I’ve been in Manhattan for 20 years. Do you know where Grand Army Plaza is? I live near there. I like that archway and the library and the Richard Meier building, it’s all very open and expansive … It feels really European, and I like that getting off the train, and there’s not as many people in the street, and it’s quiet and there’s a lot of sky. I’m right across the street from the park. I’ve been thinking about kids, so that was the main reason that I moved out there. Also, there’s more bang for your buck. I put offers on like three or four places in Manhattan, and I kept losing them to Russians coming in with all cash, twice above the asking.

Harmony Korine and Chloë Sevigny, 1997, photo Mary Frey

GLENN O’BRIEN – I lived in Fort Greene in the ’80s. I had three floors in a brownstone. But nobody would come and visit me then.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Nobody comes and visits me now! I think it’s rather the same. I’m into the pace. It’s really hokey, which I kind of like. I worked in Pittsburgh last year for six months, and I really fell in love with the city, and it feels kind of similar as far as the people in the street, and kind of mom-and-pop businesses. There’s nothing “hip” in Park Slope at all. No hipsters, nothing hip … I like that.

GLENN O’BRIEN – What were you doing in Pittsburgh?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I was doing a bad TV show that got cancelled. But I loved being there. Fuckin’ awesome.

GLENN O’BRIEN – Yeah. I like it. It’s an art town. There are a couple of good restaurants.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Really good restaurants.

GLENN O’BRIEN – The museums are great.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – The Pittsburgh International was up while I was there. I went three times. The Carnegie Museum is beautiful. Their mineral and gem collection is incredible. It’s the best in the world. The top floors of the Warhol, they always have like a rotating show. Genesis P-Orridge was up, a retrospective. That was cool. I like the floor in the Warhol, with all the TVs and the headphones, and you can watch everything. I would just go in there on my day off and, like, hang out and watch for hours. If New York fell off, I think I’d move to Pittsburgh.

GLENN O’BRIEN – What have you been working on? You’ve got a few movies in the can, right?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – No. There haven’t been a lot of movies. Which is something that I struggle with. Well, I did one with my friend Tara.

GLENN O’BRIEN – She directed it. Is that the first time she’s directed?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – It’s the first time she’s done a feature. We did a short that was on TV last year. It was quite funny.

Photo Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin

GLENN O’BRIEN – This is a horror movie, right?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Yeah, kind of … arty horror. It stars five 12-year-old girls, and I’m one of the mothers—like the absent mother.

GLENN O’BRIEN – TV now is as good as movies, right?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Well, that’s what they say.

GLENN O’BRIEN – Did you watch Boardwalk Empire?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I don’t have HBO. I guess I could buy it on iTunes. My mom watches it. She loves Steve Buscemi.

GLENN O’BRIEN – He’s like Dick Powell or Jimmy Stewart. Started out a light comedic leading man and became a tough guy.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Maybe one day I’ll get HBO-Go, and I’ll binge it. I watched all of The Sopranos again recently. So good. That to me is the best TV still.

GLENN O’BRIEN – I watched all of Breaking Bad after it ended. I binge-watched it. But I think I made a mistake letting my kid watch it with me. Maybe it added to his outlaw mentality. Big Love was HBO?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – That was HBO. It was between Sopranos and Breaking Bad as far as this wave of television. I really liked Big Love, it afforded me a great job. I made some money for the first time in my life, and played a good part. But when I took it, I was like, “Uh-oh, is this going to be the end of her film career?” Oftentimes you see people enter into television, and then their film careers kind of dissipate.

GLENN O’BRIEN – But not so much any more. Right?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Not so much any more. But at the time that it happened for me, was also when the landscape of the movies was changing, with not as many independents, and it all sort of seemed to collide at the same time. I thought a show about polygamists was so cool. Liberals hated it. It was very confusing to the public, which I like. I’m really proud of everything we did on it, but I feel like since then I’ve been trying to recapture this film career that I once had. I try not to blame it on that show, but sometimes I fear that it contributed to it. When you have momentum, and they’re like, “Oh, she’s not available because she does this show.” That’s the problem with doing TV, you’re not available for six or seven months out of the year.

GLENN O’BRIEN – But it used to be that movies took that long.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Big budget movies. I never did those.

GLENN O’BRIEN – You’ve never been in a big-budget movie?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – No. Once I guess it was kind of medium-budget, Zodiac, the David Fincher movie. That’s the biggest budget movie I was ever in. But I got minimum wage.

GLENN O’BRIEN – What they should have done with Big Love is, they should have spun off the wives as separate show like Rhoda and Phyllis and Lou Grant from The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Yeah. I think our show didn’t really catch the zeitgeist, because it was too bizarre for people to accept, and wasn’t sexy like with drugs or sex or money…

Marine and black double-faced technical Jacquard tank dress CALVIN KLEIN COLLECTION and belt FAUX/REAL

GLENN O’BRIEN – What’s the weirdest role that you ever had?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – The weirdest role?

GLENN O’BRIEN – I know you were a cop on a TV show.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Probably the weirdest experience I’ve had playing a role is I did that American Horror Story. Do you know that TV show? It’s really popular. After two or three episodes, I get turned into this monster, and all I do is kind of like gurgle. I had this insane makeup that took like three hours, and my legs cut off. When I first came to set, I was kind of, like, playing sexy, and all the boys were flirting, and by the end, they wouldn’t even look me in the eye.

GLENN O’BRIEN – I think it’s weird that Bradley Cooper is playing the Elephant Man on Broadway. Something seems not right.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Well, I mean, David Bowie did it.

GLENN O’BRIEN – Yeah, but he’s weird.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Yeah, but he’s more beautiful than Bradley Cooper.

GLENN O’BRIEN – Maybe it was more about “How do you follow three Hangovers?” I saw Man Who Fell to Earth the other night. It’s even weirder now.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Is Bowie still a weirdo? How does one maintain their weirdness over time?

GLENN O’BRIEN – Bowie? I think he’s just got it. He’s special. Gifted.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – You kind of do lose touch. He had a lull after “Let’s Dance.” How do you stay in touch with the people on the weirder side of life? Do you know what I mean? I often think about that when I see performers and people that I admire getting older. Women always start to do an Asian influence, like kimonos… [LAUGHS] How do you keep current, keep ahead, and keep it weird? Or how do you just stay true. Like a Jim Jarmusch.

GLENN O’BRIEN – Well, Jim is really stubborn, I think. There’s nobody as kind of blinders-on as Jim.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – But I think he struggles to get things made because of that. I don’t think financing comes easily to him.

GLENN O’BRIEN – I bet Only Lovers Left Alive makes money when they finish counting.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Well, it played for a really long time.

GLENN O’BRIEN – I really liked it.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I liked it. I found it interesting that he and Lars put out these movies at the same time where they’re talking about all these very eccentric things. Did you see Nymphomania?

GLENN O’BRIEN – I did. Part one. I’m gearing up for part two.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – That was like a list of things that he was into …. kind of in the way that Only Lovers Left Alive is a list of all the things that Jim thinks are great. [LAUGHS] The books and all the pictures on the wall. My main problem with it is that I really have a problem with heroin, and I feel like there are so many parallels. Heroin was always such a love-hate thing. I really have a certain disdain for it, and I feel like there is a romanticizing of that, which is often in vampire pictures: “Oh, this is the good stuff.” Then they fall back in their drugged-out stupor. That for me is a little nauseating. [LAUGHS]

GLENN O’BRIEN – What was the Bowie vampire movie?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – The Hunger. That doesn’t have as much of a heroin vibe. I guess they’re always fixing, though … copping.

Chloë Sevigny, 2000, photo Glynnis McDaris

GLENN O’BRIEN – Going to cop the good blood.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – [LAUGHS]

GLENN O’BRIEN – I guess if you get enough horror movies under your belt, you could be our Bette Davis.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Well, now that’s all I’m offered. Now, I keep getting offered horror movies. When your film career is waning, you get offered all horror pictures!

GLENN O’BRIEN – It’s not that your career is waning. It’s transitioning.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – [LAUGHS] Ok. And what does one do when one wants to work?

GLENN O’BRIEN – Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte with Chloë Sevigny.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I don’t know.

GLENN O’BRIEN – Did you ever think of producing something?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Actually, I’ve been developing something for like the past five years, which is kind of horror-related, about Lizzie Borden. It was my first foray into that kind of thing, and it was a real eye-opener as far as how the business works, and how difficult it is to get something made. This is why certain people have four or five projects going at the same time, and producers have eight to 10 or more. Because it’s such a struggle. It was really disappointing. But we’re still trying to keep it alive, because the script is so great, and I have a real love for her. But we’ll see. Then I read this book recently, The Poet and the Vampire, about Mary Shelley and Byron, when they were on their vacation in Geneva, and Byron made this competition for them, to write a horror short story, which was the inception of Frankenstein and Dracula. I was thinking, “Oh, Mary Shelley, she’s such a fascinating woman. What rebels they were, such revolutionaries!” But then I went online and found somebody else is already making that, starring Sophie Turner from Game of Thrones, the pretty redhead girl.

GLENN O’BRIEN – So do you still design clothes?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I do. I just had a show in September. I’m trying to do it once a year, when it’s convenient, which is nice. I have a line called Tri-State Represent that’s at Opening Ceremony. Opening Ceremony is like a kid-friendly version of Charivari. Remember Charivari?

GLENN O’BRIEN – Sure.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – It’s like the new brands, but it’s more family-friendly. I used to go into Charivari when I was in high school. I was like obsessed with Charivari and If, in Soho, which is still there. Now there’s Dover Street Market.

GLENN O’BRIEN – I like Dover Street Market. I got this jacket there. It’s Palace, a skateboarder brand. I was walking through the store, and this kid salesman said, “I’ve got the jacket for you.” I put it on, and I thought, “Wow, pretty good.” Now my son steals it from me.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I hate it when sales-people bug me. They try to push things. They think that you don’t have your own taste. But yeah, I do my line once a year, kind of as a way to keep busy and kind of for extra income, and kind of just as an outlet. I get to do these shows and presentations and look-books. There’s so many different elements, so it’s quite involved, and I like that.

Midnight wool canvas coat CÉLINE with Charlotte patent leather mules KENZO

GLENN O’BRIEN – Is it what you wear?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Well, this white suit I’m wearing now is one of them from last year.

GLENN O’BRIEN – It’s demure but sexy at the same time. So what does “Tri-State Represent” represent?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Tri-State is the tri-state area, New York-New Jersey-Connecticut. Well, growing up, kids always wore these hats that said, like, “Syracuse Lacrosse” or, like, you know, the white ones with the lines. So I wanted to do, like, a riff on that, like, a funny, university-style cap, but with “Tri-state.”

GLENN O’BRIEN – I like that. I always liked the tri-state … I was an editor at Spin magazine. They said, “Do you want to be a senior editor?” I said, “No, it makes me sound old; I’ll be the tri-state editor.” People asked me, “Is that like, New York-New Jersey-Connecticut?” and I said, “No, it’s like asleep-awake-intoxicated.”
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Lizzi Bougatsos, one of my best friends, is from Long Island, and we always joke we’re from the Tri-State area. So I kind of made it for us.

GLENN O’BRIEN – So is there anything else you want to talk about in Purple magazine?
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I think I would like if Olivier took photos of girls that weren’t so homogenized in their nudity always. I feel like there’s this trend of what is kind of aesthetically pleasing in female form right now, and I feel like if there was more variety, if women felt that was something that was appealing, it would be better for womankind.

GLENN O’BRIEN – This woman photographer was having a show and there was a statement in the announcement of the show about how only a woman could take these photographs, and I’m looking at them and thinking, “I could have taken those photographs.”
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Why did she think that?

GLENN O’BRIEN – I don’t know.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – And they were nudes?

Chloë Sevigny, photo Anthony Bianco

GLENN O’BRIEN – Yeah. They’re not what Olivier would have taken…
CHLOË SEVIGNY – No arched backs.

GLENN O’BRIEN – It’s hard to take an original nude, I think.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – I found that interesting, actually, when I was doing the book, as far as editing, like, having done so many photo shoots … All the kind of glamour ones seemed so uninteresting, and the ones where it’s more just like straightforward, or the more reportage-y ones, the ones that I never wanted to have taken, were the ones that really maintained their timelessness and were more interesting to me than any of the gloss or glamour. So there’s hardly any glamour in the book, because to me the images don’t stand up as well. I also wanted to capture a free-in-the-streets kind of vibe with the book, this kind of ugly girl from Connecticut gets to do all this crazy shit! [LAUGHS]

GLENN O’BRIEN – I kind of hate the fashion world. It focuses people on all the wrong things. I hate fashion photography and fashion magazines. A few years ago, some magazines started doing their compulsory advertiser thing with portraits, and that seemed like a lot more the way it should be, instead of like this corny, faux sexy posing. I like it even more if there’s no stylist. It always bugs me when there are actors on some best-dressed list, because you know that they have a stylist and they didn’t pay for their clothes.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – Yup. Then they also have stylists that dress them like day-in and day-out. I’ve been in my favorite vintage stores, and they’re like, “our biggest customers have never been in here; their stylists come and get racks and bring them to their house, and set them up for the week.” I never worked with a stylist. [LAUGHS] Not for the red carpet, at least.

GLENN O’BRIEN – You’re my ideal.
CHLOË SEVIGNY – [LAUGHS]

END