Chloe Sevigny – Style Icon

Since her screen debut in 1995’s gritty indie flick “Kids”, something about Sevigny has made the public sit up and pay attention. By the time she was recognised for her Oscar nominated performance in 1999’s “Boys Don’t Cry”, she was a fully fledged star, and the fashion industry could not get enough of her. But the one time wannabe-designer’s inimitable style had been picked up long before she was embraced by the who’s who of Hollywood. Before her acting career took off, Sevigny was featured in a 7 page feature in New Yorker magazine on Hip Manhattan Street culture, which led to a covetable modelling career including a Miu Miu campaign, and her being featured in a string of music videos including one for the Lemonheads. Her sense of style, it seems, has always come as second nature, and was by no means manufactured by a Hollywood career.

In fact, the actress is known to pay no mind to trends, stylists, or the fashion world in general. Her style is completely her own. As Balenciaga designer Nicolas Ghesquiere put it: “Whether she wears designer clothes or vintage clothes, they always look like Chloe Sevigny clothes”.

Indeed, it is this blend of thrift shop bargains and designer brand pieces that seem to epitomise Sevigny’s distinctive look – the industry dubbed “vintage-chic”; a look that has whipped the fashion conscious into a frenzy of late, as they struggle to mimic the actresses innate style. But Sevigny is far from fond of her iconic status: “For some reason the public has embraced me as a fashion icon, and I feel like it has diminished me as an actress, or I don’t get as much recognition as an actress”, complained the star, “and that upsets me”.

But it is just this apparent indifference and effortlessness to her style of dress that has the fashion industry in awe, and that makes it so difficult to achieve for fashion followers. Sevigny, it appears, will always be at least two, or three, or even four steps ahead of the fashion pack: “Every time I see a photo of myself from the past month I think, ‘what was I thinking?’” confessed the actress in a recent interview. Her crazes are fleeting and her look changes as quickly as most of us change our underwear, making her maddeningly, yet endearingly inimitable.

Sevigny is a red carpet favourite, appearing at all the events to be seen at in beautiful designer dresses, but always with her own signature twist. At the recent Cartier Santos Night party, she coupled a flowy, white Balenciaga knee length dress with brown ankle boots. Her yellow Louis Vuitton (incidentally one of her favourite designers) dress she wore for the M A C Viva Glam benefit, for whom she is a spokeswoman, featured a bikini-esque revealing top, which dropped into a figure hugging pencil skirt style from the waist. But Sevigny insists that the glossy, designer look we see on the red carpet is not at all her own. Instead, the actress insists her wardrobe is stocked almost entirely from thrift and vintage stores, with the occasional conventional separate thrown in for good measure.

Unlike most Hollywood starlets, you won’t find Sevigny meandering down Rodeo Drive on her shopping sprees. You are more likely to spot the independent actress in quirky stores such as C Madeline’s Showroom; a vintage store in Miami that stocks almost 100 years worth of the finest vintage clothing from all the greats, such as Gucci, Bill Blass, Halston and even designers dating back to Victorian times!

Throughout her impressive young career, Sevigny has also lent her expertise to the hugely successful clothing label “Imitation of Christ” (which counts Scarlett Johansson as one of it’s biggest fans), which has received widespread acclaim from the industry, and has appropriately been referred to as “the fashion industry’s answer to independent film”. Another feather in the cap of the woman who has repeatedly been placed in the much coveted ‘best dressed’ lists of all the big industry bibles, Vogue and Bazaar to name but two; and we’re talking top three here, at least. Pretty impressive from the girl who admits she always wore short shorts to divert attention away from her face.

It’s this fascinating mix of modesty and incredibly self-assured strength and confidence in what she does, and more importantly, what she wears, that makes Chloe Sevigny one of today’s most impressive fashion icons. Although her look is one that may never translate directly to the high street (I don’t see myself wearing a wedding dress over a leopard print leotard any time soon), let it at least inspire us to inject that little bit of different into our Autumn ’05 wardrobes!