Chloë Sevigny: Style as Subversion Since ‘Kids’

22 / 08 / 2025
POR Marian Coma

Few have blurred the lines between fashion and self-expression like Chloë Sevigny, whose iconic presence has remained as unpredictable as it is unforgettable.

When Chloë Sevigny debuted in Kids (1995), directed by Larry Clark and written by Harmony Korine, she stepped into the cultural psyche as a symbol of raw realism. In a world shaped by bravado, risk and a deeply gendered imbalance of power, her character Jennie disrupted expectations through both presence and appearance. Rejecting conventional femininity, she wore loose jeans, plain T-shirts and no makeup, blending in visually with the boys while remaining emotionally apart. That early gesture of dressing like the boys while seeing through them prefigured how Sevigny would later shape her own identity through style: a way of expressing herself from the margins, mixing codes, disobeying rules and letting ambiguity speak louder than any label.

From there, Sevigny became the ultimate muse for a new aesthetic language, one that blurred the lines between masculine and feminine, thrift and couture, high fashion and streetwear. With her angular beauty and self-assured awkwardness, she resisted the polish expected of Hollywood ingénues. Instead, she embraced androgyny, played with proportions and wore whatever felt right in the moment, be it a Peter Pan collar or a Thom Browne suit. In doing so, she helped rewrite the fashion codes of the 2000s, alongside designers like Miu Miu, Ghesquière’s Balenciaga and Proenza Schouler.

Her style has always been performative and political, a boyish blazer over lace tights, a vintage wedding dress worn to a downtown party, a preppy sweater paired with punk boots. Rather than rejecting gendered codes, Sevigny inhabits them, bends them and reclaims them. At times delicate, other times confrontational, always unapologetic, she crafts an identity that resists definition.

Still today, Chloë Sevigny remains a fixture on the margins, those fertile, feral edges where culture shifts before it’s named. Her style is not about trends, but about transformation: fashion as feeling, femininity as flux.

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