Chloë Sevigny Knows You Like to Wear Her Face
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links."
I’ve almost worn Chloë Sevigny’s face a couple of times, but something has always held me back. Like everyone else who has ever seen it, I know it’s a good face. But before buying the Supreme Gummo jersey or a vintage meta X-Girl shirt (on which Sevigny poses while also wearing an X-Girl shirt), I’ve always wondered what her face would look like while looking at my face, wearing her face. Like, wouldn’t that freak her out? The thought of scaring someone whose face I like enough to wear has kept me from buying anything with Sevigny’s likeness on it (aside from her recent book with Chopova Lowena … and her Rizzoli style photo book … and a copy of her Face magazine cover from 2000).
But as I learned while on a Zoom call with the actor the other week, while we were both vacationing miles apart in Cape Cod, she often sees people wearing her face in New York—and she’s very into it. The exact words she used were “I love it."
Seeing unfamiliar faces wearing her face is also partially what inspired her most recent collection with Fucking Awesome. Back in 2014, the skate brand issued a pink skateboard deck with Sevigny’s shaved-head high school portrait on it. Recently, the team approached her about doing a reissue of the board, which has become a grail among the fashion set for whom the longtime It girl is a patron saint. It frequently retails for upward of $1,000 on eBay and was spotted last year, inexplicably, with Jason Momoa. (Sevigny liked that he used rails. “That’s so old-fashioned. People don’t use those anymore. I was like, ‘Oh, he’s trying to protect my face!’”)
While that release was nearly a decade ago, Sevigny still remembers the initial response. “That skateboard was a hit! People were crazy for it, and I loved seeing kids riding in my face, getting it all scratched up in the beautiful way that like … only a kid riding a rail can scratch up one’s face. Fucking Awesome approached me recently and said, ‘Look, there’s a whole new generation that are dying for these decks. And we want to give them to the kids!’”
At first she hesitated. Her immediate response, she said, was: “Um.”
“It was such a capsule thing,” she explained. “It existed so perfectly in itself, I thought, Do we really want to redo it?” That’s when she had the idea to expand on the original collection with girl’s clothing. “Baby tees are few and far between in the skate world.”
The collection, which launched yesterday, also features a piece inspired by a skirt she bought from longtime friend and stylist Haley Woolens at one of the duo’s infamous closet sales. “It was too short, so I added an eyelet to the bottom so I could wear it and it would cover my behind,” Sevigny said. “But I was also really inspired by Junya Watanabe and how they would always add eyelet to the bottom of the denim skirts they made—I’m always a fan of an eyelet. I liked the idea of doing something [for this collection] that was a little heightened and that was true to me, mimicking something that I had actually crafted with my own hands and hoping that would translate into something special.” Fucking Awesome’s iteration is named the Chloë Lace Tennis Skirt. It has a small heart embroidered at the side with the letters FA at the center and adorned with a tiny pink bow.
What gave Sevigny the confidence to say yes to the reissue and the expanded collection, she said, was seeing the girls in New York who weren’t afraid to buy that Gummo jersey. “I would see girls wearing that with a kilt underneath. I saw a girl on Instagram tag me and I sent it to the guys at Fucking Awesome and I said, ‘This is our girl! Look, she’s wearing the outfit we just made! It’s just a different version of the uniform.’”
As someone who has never had anyone wear their face, I asked Sevigny what it is actually like to see so many people wearing hers. “The other day my husband said, ‘Wow, there’s lots of clothing with your face on it,’” she said. When they went to see electronic band Salem in Coney Island a few weeks ago, she saw more than a handful of those pieces in person. Seeing them made her “very excited for a resurgence of the Fucking Awesome decks and to see them skating,” she said. “I remember seeing kids with the board on the side of the street. And I’d think, Do I go up to them? Or do I just leave them alone? Would it be exciting to them? Or am I being an asshole? Like?” She laughed.
Despite existing in the periphery of skate culture for decades, Sevigny admitted to barely knowing how to skate, although she said she did ride to Kim’s Video & Music on First Avenue in the East Village to rent films with director Harmony Korine back in the ’80s. She became interested in skate culture thanks to her older brother. “There was a real alternative culture back then that involved skateboarding and music and fashion, and it all coexisted,” she said. “I was birthed into that by my brother, sitting by the ramp as a young skate Betty or whatever it was.”
While she insisted she doesn’t really have her “finger on the pulse” of the current skating universe, at 48 years old, she’s somehow still at the center of it. Earlier today, Fucking Awesome posted an Instagram Story of security footage of a teen stealing a poster of Sevigny’s high school portrait that had been plastered on the brand’s New York store window. He’s wearing what could easily be a pair of vintage JNCOs and a backward baseball cap, looking like he was plucked out of the ’90s and dropped onto our phone screens with a filter.
It feels obvious to me why he would want it so badly. Sevigny’s face represents the ineffable coolness that used to permeate the streets of New York. And despite being able to purchase it—at least in the form of a T-shirt or skate deck—you’ll never be able to replicate what it represents. Unless maybe, you steal it.
Sevigny reposted the video and wrote in large white text, “The kids are amped.”
The new collection is available now at faworldentertainment.com, and Chloë Sevigny will be signing boards in person at the Fucking Awesome store at 420 East 9th Street today in New York from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.
You Might Also Like
