Chloe Sevigny

Having been to Coachella a couple times, I know it's really hard to judge what people wear there: You're in a giant polo field in the middle of the desert, temperatures are usually upwards of 95 degrees, you're there for ten hours or so, and somewhere around 3 p.m. you want to lie down in a corner of the lawn and die peacefully of heatstroke. When beer re-hydrates you almost as well as water, you know it's tough going out there.

But you know what doesn't help in that kind of weather?


[Photo: PacificCoastNewsOnline.com]

Thick socks and your grandmother's best sandals. It's been a few years since I've gone, but I'm pretty sure Coachella hasn't added a Bingo Tent.

Well, well, well.



Look who they've got their Hanes on NOW.

Seriously, dudes, I hate it when Chloe Sevigny shows up places and looks awesome, and it's happening more than it used to.

I haven't seen hide nor hair of Chloe Sevigny in ages. Maybe she's too busy filming Big Love to get out much anymore, or maybe she's just been hanging out at home working on a giant jigsaw puzzle of Mount Rushmore and drinking cocoa or something. At any rate, I admit that I am pleased to see her out and about once more:


And I actually think she looks kind of awesome. Sure, the top of it is kind of unusual, in a way that could get sort of Springing-Out-of-an-Envelope-y, but I think it works. But it's entirely possible that I've been so Sevigny-starved that I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Usually, I can count on Chloe Sevigny for one of two things: looking shockingly awesome, or -- more often -- wearing something so weird that it reminds me all over again how she was one of the original icons of fuggery back when we started the site, thus enabling me to throw a cathartic tantrum. Rarely does she snooze it up for us by landing somewhere in between, and yet, I can feel the yawn rising in my chest:



Not that it's GOOD. No. Just that, given how Chloe's inspiration these days seems to be seasons 1-4 of 90210, it comes as no surprise to me that she's wearing wide-legged business trousers that, say, Brenda would've worn with a tie and Doc Martens while she was screaming at Kelly never to speak to her again. I'm mildly alarmed that it looks like she threw the pants on after synchronized-swimming practice, and the hair and makeup are doing her no favors, but overall it bores me. She's The Sev. Chloe Sofugny. Madam Fugigny. She has the skills! She ought to be wearing a dowdy housedress over the pants that's belted with a steering wheel. As it is... this is a poor use of her unique and special talents as an artisan of fug.

Although, in a way, that flares up my dormant righteous rage as much as anything. Yes, I think this outfit is lousy, but I'm also cranky that it's a LAZY form of lousy. Sack UP, SEV. Bust out your feathered hot pants and granny's high-necked lace blouses. Dust off your plaid spandex body-glove and paisley tutu. You were a Fug Madness semi-finalist, for Bjork's sake! Don't let your awful be so ordinary. DON'T YOU SEE WE NEED YOU?

Phew. I guess I sort of got my tantrum after all.

All of yesterday, we assumed we'd just been hallucinating -- that our elevated temperatures and wilting brains had invented the horrors of Chloe Sevigny's new collection for Opening Ceremony. Surely it was too absurd to be real, we figured, or they were prank photographs. I mean, she's a fashion nutjob, but she's not THAT off her tree any more, is she?

Well... apparently we are too trusting. Not only is this real, but it's Ultimate Fug. It's borne of the bowels of fug, rolled in a crispy fug coating, and deep fried in fugpura batter.

Unless your name is Tawny Kitaen, and/or you're working on your Rock Of Love audition tape for the inevitable next season, you have no business wearing this.

All of the photos, and outfits, look oddly like posters for really terrible old Lifetime Television For Women movies. You know, like, Her Stove Was Hot: My Wife, My Ho: The Trixie Lynn Bakerberry Story.

Oh, Miss Tyra, you do amuse us so. We like to call this touching portrait A Girl And Her Twinkie:

Gotta respect a woman who not only puts greasy baked goods in her mouth, but thinks it's fun for it to happen on camera. And also, I know some people out there want us to stop yapping about Miss Tyra's wig or weave or whatever we feel like calling it that day -- it could be both, or neither; it is all things, and yet it is nothing -- and we do feel you. We do. But seriously, HOW do you expect us to do that? How? We are but mortal. We adore her crazy hair. It's impossible to resist discussing something that looks so heavy and itchy and as if it was recently shorn from the business end of a horse. So, with apologies to those non-congratulators, we not only can't not reference it, but in fact, it gets its own affectionate section in our book  -- which, shameless plug ahoy, hits stores today. The City of New York is courteously throwing a parade to honor the occasion, although I think there is some nonsense about us sharing the party with Michael Strahan and Eli Manning. Pish. We call shenanigans on that.

Here's what we were up to while Tyra was romancing her snack cake:

• Ellen Pompeo seemed very pleasant in perilous circumstances at Y-3.
• Chloe Sevigny barely conceals her distaste for Miss Sixty; Milla Jovovich at times doesn't even try.
• Angie Harmon is a smart girl, getting a hair wrangler to make sure everything was in place before her photo op at Carolina Herrera.
• We wish Tim Gunn could've stopped the rock at Catherine Malandrino. That music was scary.
• What happens when a fashion show starts on time? Some celebrities miss it, that's what.
• Do you think Betsey Johnson gave attendee Joan Jett another dime to put in the jukebox, baby?
• Maybe Eliza Dushku can figure out what the hell the gift was at Ports 1961.

I knew this would happen. In many ways, I hoped it would, kind of like how the best way to make your food come at a restaurant is to get up and go to the bathroom, or the quickest way to get someone to call you is to give up on them and turn off your phone and go sit in the hot tub. And the best way to get Chloe Sevigny to confuse the hell out of you is to tell her you like her orange dress.

Welcome back, Chloe.

I actually sort of like her shirt -- longer, and it'd make a cute vintage-looking white summer dress. But of course, Chloe being Chloe, she would rather wear it with the spawn of a pair of leggings that spent one confusing, sweaty summer night in the barn making frenetic, hay-coated love to a pair of jodhpurs.

That's our Sev. Which would be a nice title for a sitcom based on her crazy fashion antics and the group of saner friends who just sit back and shake their heads in wonder at her inanity -- when they're not busy acting on all the sexual tension, of course.

I think playing buttoned-up Nicki on Big Love -- she of the high-necked blouses, frumpy skirts, and patronizing smile -- might have been just what the  doctor ordered for Chloe Sevigny, Duchess of Fugville.

See, the less naked she is on TV and the more repressed and wound-up her character gets, the more she wants to knock your socks into next month's laundry pile when she shows up on a red carpet. 

She just looks so good here. That color works really well with her skin, the shoes ought to be sitting in my closet, her hair is simple but sexy, and she even managed to make an otherwise clashing pink croc clutch (which, seriously, why is that not ALSO in my closet?) work with the bright orange by throwing in a funky bracelet that plays off both shades. Why can't she do this more often? Maybe the fake love of a good man and his two other wives were all Chloe needed to wash off the evils of The Brown Bunny and all the sour-faced insanity that came before and after it.

Not that I'm suggesting polygamy can cure your fashion problems; merely that it takes something VERY unusual to cure you of the taint of Vincent Gallo's t'aint.

I've come to the conclusion that maybe Chloe Sevigny isn't wearing this sort of thing to be ironic, after all. I used to think she was like those young dudes who consciously and carefully grow handlebar mustaches, because nothing is sexier than being ironic all over your own face. And this irked me. After a certain age, looking ugly on purpose to prove that you're too cool to care is just sad. But now I actually suspect that C. Sev seriously might just totally dig the 80s:

If that is the case, I must salute her commitment to the cause. It takes a real fan to tackle both shiny chintz and puffy sleeves with such enthusiasm. And if that is the reason behind this recreation of a dress Dynasty's Fallon Carrington might have worn to some oil-related function that she would have then snuck out of to try to seduce her step-mother's tennis coach, then I have to try my best to understand. And likewise wonder what else this love of the 80s hath wrought in Chloe's life: Does she spend an inordinate amount of time on eBay, tracking down cases of New Coke, only to give up periodically and just drive out to the one place in the state that still sells Tab? Does she have a Mon Chi Chi next to her bed, and does she sing the Mon Chi Chi song to it every morning when she wakes up underneath her Strawberry Shortcake duvet? Does the very existence of Cool Ranch Doritos thrill her to the bone, and does she try and sneak them into matinée showings of The Goonies?  Is she pretty sure that she's going to marry Michael J. Fox? Because if so...I will maybe let this pass. A passionate crush on Michael J. Fox leaves you very little time to really concentrate on what you're wearing, which also excuses those stirrup pants I had in 6th grade.