Destiny calls Chloe

Interview, August, 1995 by Ingrid Sischy

INGRID SISCHY: Firstly, Chloe, tell me about growing up and New York City.

CHLOE SEVIGNY: My father used to work in New York, and when I was a little girl, he'd bring me into the city about once a month and we'd go to Saks. We couldn't stay away from there. All the women in the girls' department there knew me. [laughs] That's when my infatuation with New York began.

IS: You lived in Darien, Connecticut, right? How did you feel about high school?

CS: Aryan Darien. [laughs] I was pretty much like a loner, I guess, although I hate to use that word.

IS: What made you feel like you didn't belong?

CS: It seemed like everyone had BMWs and Jeeps and nice cars and a lot of money, and I just thought it was really obnoxious. Maybe I wasn't fair. But I didn't want to get involved with all that.

IS: Was there a political consciousness in your school? Or was it all about material things?

CS: It was way more material. Everyone was like way overachievers and into athletics and wanted to go to Ivy League schools. I didn't do any extracurricular activities in high school. I guess I skated a bit. My brother had been a skater. We had two ramps in our backyard. I'd sit by the ramps and watch his friends skate. That's when my infatuation with skaters began. I wasn't very good at ramps, so I used to skate freestyle.

IS: Did you have heroines? Heroes?

CS: No.

IS: Books that you loved?

CS: Not really.

IS: What would you do? Basically stay in your room?

CS: It was more interesting than the boys in Darien. [laughs] Mostly I sewed. I had nothing better to do, so I made my own clothes.

IS: Tell me more about knowing that the sheltered life wasn't for you.

CS: I would yell at my parents every night, "I can't believe you, you're bringing me up here. You guys are, like, so evil. [laughs] Let's move." I started to leave every weekend and go to Boston or up to Vermont, going all around New England. Then the VW bus I had broke down, so it was like, "Oh, I guess I'll go into the city." When I started to hang out in New York, I met a bunch of kids in Washington Square Park. It seemed like the most diverse crowd was hanging out there. I would, like, stare at all these boys, and they all thought I had a staring problem, but it was just that I had never seen so many different kinds of people in my life.

IS: Were your parents worried about you going into New York all the time?

CS: Not at all. My father totally understood. He'd lived on St. Marks Place - in the '60s, I guess - and he loves New York as much as I do. I'd just have to call home every night, or on the weekend if I was here for the weekend.

IS: Did you have a dream of what you wanted to do when school was over?

CS: I thought I maybe wanted to be involved in the fashion industry in some way, maybe in magazines. Between my junior and senior years in high school - the summer of '92 - I got an internship at Sassy magazine as the fashion editor's assistant, picking clothes up at stores, stamping envelopes - stuff normal interns do at magazines.

IS: Hadn't they done pictures of you before that?

CS: Yes, they saw me in the street.

IS: That's happened a few times, right? With other photographers and other magazines?

CS: Yes.

IS: So you could have been a contender in the fashion-magazine business, huh?

CS: [laughs] I grew out of that stage.

IS: O.K., back to how you saw your future.

CS: I knew I was going to leave Darien as soon as I graduated. I left the day afterward.

IS: You were in school when?

CS: '89-'93.

IS: Was there an awareness of AIDS there?

CS: No. Nor of homosexuality.

IS: When did you first hear about AIDS?

CS: I think when I was a freshman in high school. I think my mother read me something in a magazine about it. But people in Darien didn't talk about it.

IS: Did you have sex during high school?

CS: Yes. And my parents didn't know. The first time I went to a gynecologist I was already out on my own.

IS: I think it's hard for parents and kids to face this stuff together, but I wish they could.

CS: I think everyone is afraid for everyone.

IS: Me, too. It's understandable. But it results in feelings of aloneness and confusion and ignorance. All that's poison, as we know. Sex is probably the most difficult subject in the world for families to deal with. And drugs aren't easy either. But look what happens when nobody deals with any of this stuff. Some of that is what Kids, the movie you're in, is all about. Boy, does it make you want to get people to talk about these things.

CS: I learned about sex from Judy Blume books. I still have all the books. My mother read them, too. We read another book with a title that went something like "getting to know your body." And in high school she gave me an original copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves.

IS: You know, it's Interesting that in Kids [written by Harmony Korine], apart from one mother in one scene, there are no parents around at all. It's a very noticeable absence in the movie, and I suspect Harmony was totally purposeful in presenting things this way.

CS: Yep.

IS: So, when you used to come to New York during high school, why did you choose Washington Square Park and not Central Park?