Chloë Sevigny and Sofia Coppola were hanging out with the rock band Sonic Youth. It was the early 90s and the band was driving the experimental rock scene in New York where Sevigny was already becoming a cult figure in the underground scene. Sevigny was teetering on the cusp of adulthood and Coppola was in her early 20s when they started appearing in the band’s eclectic music videos. Not long later, the girls walked X-girl’s catwalk in designs by bassist and vocalist Kim Gordon collaborating with mastermind Daisy von Furth. Angela Hill? She lensed that.
Looking at Angela Hill’s long-lost photographs of the X-girl show with models in similar ringers and sports shirts, it’s easy to notice the similarity between what Sevigny was wearing in Sugar Kane a couple of years earlier. Sonic Youth’s Mildred Pierce video saw Coppola act out as an exaggerated caricature of a wide-eyed, thick-eyebrowed Joan Crawford having a fit on the streets of Hollywood. Ever loyal to the brand she interned for at fifteen, Coppola’s Crawford wore Chanel with a wire hanger. Fashion was important to this moment.
In one of X-girl’s earliest films in 1995, Sevigny twists advertising catchphrases like “only one thing comes in between me and my Calvins” implying what X-girls wanted to do was shift from the mainstream, being dejected by the clothing in the stores, this movement also included disregarding oversized womenswear. Giving rebel with a cause, Sevigny stalked the streets in a close-cropped haircut, short ringer shorts that’d been styled with a form-fitting sports jersey and walking into a fashion show for Sugar Kane. Profiling Sevigny who was sitting at an outdoor table on St Mark’s Place, Jay McInerney would write for The New Yorker in 1994, “Do they recognise her from the Sonic Youth video — the one filmed in Marc Jacobs’ showroom, which was kind of a spoof of the whole grunge thing — or did they catch her modelling the X-girl line last spring?”
Sonic Youth had used Jacobs’ showroom at Perry Ellis to film Sugar Kane and with Coppola being his friend, it was probably safer and smarter for the show to take place on the streets outside the Marc Jacobs show. It was Coppola and Spike Jonze’s idea – who at that time was directing the band’s music videos and started dating Coppola after they met on set. “It was either going to be, write a romance novel or produce a fashion show,” Jonze said to reporters after the show.
Thus, as the guests piled out from the Marc Jacobs show, the X-girl show began – Coppola and Jonze had stolen a sheet from the Paramount hotel and spray painted it in pink which said, “X-girl is #1”. Among the people who gathered was the fashion photographer Angela Hill – now the co-founder of the industry’s favourite bookstore IDEA. “I think my flatmate knew some people at the show,” she recalled, “I wasn’t assigned to any show that fashion week and neither did I want to be a conventional show photographer.” And neither are usual show photographs, but ones bottling the essence of the joy and abandon of doing a show on the streets with Gordon’s friends like Michele Lockwood and Pumpkin Wentzel, and a few models from Ford, with no rules other than Coppola wanting the models to walk slowly as there were only twenty looks, but only a couple of walkie talkies and a stolen sheet.
Hill found these photographs last Christmas after they’d been saved from a flood in her basement. The youthful romanticism of doing such a show spilled onto the photographs, tinted in a wane light that made it seem far away from New York. X-girls would go on to define 90s skater-girl chic which shifted away from the rebellion of deconstructed grunge into something more urban yet underground at the same time. We are still into their 1978 prep schoolgirl with hair clips, white hats and tennis shoes. It was as von Furth said, “for the 15-year-old skategirls, 18-year-old ravers, 20-year-old indie rockers, 25 year-old fashion types, 30-year-old glamorous women, 40-year-old rock stars”. Upon IDEA’s release of a compilation of the photographs, METAL sat down with Hill for a rapid fire on her memory of the show back in 1994.
What made you take your camera out?
I just always carried a camera – everyday.
What were your immediate thoughts and feelings?
Excitement. I always get caught up in shows. As a young child, I loved going to pageants and something called The Lord Mayor’s Show which is a flotilla parade through the City of London once a year, our Lord Mayor rides in a glass carriage.
Did you get to talk to anyone?
No, I don’t remember talking to anyone, really but I supposed I could have done. Me and my flatmate were just hanging around like everyone else.
Were you part of the alternate or indie music scene in New York, like most people in the show?
Absolutely not! I had been much more into music when at university. I went to clubs and festivals and a few gigs still, but I was not in the scene – especially in New York.
Did you think that the show would become such a cult thing?
It has become a cult thing, but I do not remember it as being anything special. Everyone just went to the next show. There were all the usual happenings and parties going on every night and we went to all the arty, indie crowd ones rather than official big label ones. So, the same people would revolve around the galleries and shows and parties.
Did you wear the clothes yourself?
I did wear X-girl at the time, and I also bought a few pieces of Coppola’s Milk Fed. I have no idea if it left an impact on young fashion, I presume so.
This was also the time when the idea of the modern commercial fashion show was really coming into being. Do you think this show contributed to the discourse by being different from shows conducted in massive locations?
Yes, it was just so much more fun. I’m always drawn to the maverick designers and ways of doing things. I used to love the big Yohji or Prada or McQueen shows but these were more random and therefore exciting.
Kyle MacLachlan and Linda Evangelista were in the crowd after the Marc Jacobs show – it was literally the era of Twin Peaks and the supermodels.
Yes, I remember everyone making a fuss about Kyle and Linda. I wouldn’t have been listening to reactions from the MJ crowd specifically.
After the show did you put the photographs away and until you uncovered them last year or were they printed elsewhere?
After the show, I moved to a hundred different flats in London, leading a very freelance existence. I had moved a lot of books and magazines and work stuff to my parents’ house. Last Christmas – literally 30 years later, I opened a sodden box that had been in my mother’s garage which was flooded. The lab took three weeks to reconstruct them, and I managed to salvage these for the book.
What state were they in?
The negs were mouldy and marked. You can still see some marks on some pages.
The photographs have a very romantic aura to them, did you choose to photograph the show that way?
Not deliberate at all. I had a cheap camera and would not have had sophisticated lenses.
Did you make a selection?
Hardly any selection as I liked them all!
