Early Life and Sassy Magazine
Raised in the privileged suburbs of Darien, Connecticut, the teenage Chloë Sevigny felt alienated from her peers. (She called the town "Aryan Darien." One of her first jobs was sweeping the tennis courts of the country club her parents couldn't afford to attend.) To escape, she would take weekend trips to New York City, where she embraced an underground culture of skateboarding, nightlife, and raves.
On one of these trips, a fashion editor from
Sassy magazine, impressed by Sevigny's look, recruited her for an internship, a move that launched Sevigny's career in the world of fashion. In an
interview with
Style magazine, Sevigny describes how her earlier years helped shape her style:
"My father was very stylish and my mother took me thrifting. It was very frugal, so I guess I had to find little treasures. My elder brother was into skate-punk, so I wanted to be like him. Because the town was all homogenised blonde, blue-eyed preppy girls, I wanted to be able to identify with reject, misfit kids from other towns. Your outfits were your flag."
[Young Chloë Sevigny, via]