BIRTHDAY SUITS

On the cusp of 50, CHLOË SEVIGNY is ready for a change.

- Emily Gould

As she enters the deserted tea shop in Soho, Chloë Sevigny is carrying a large cardboard box containing vintage Margiela boots from the RealReal, a giant pink neoprene tote, and a boxy black Loewe purse. Her long beachy-yellow hair is down under a cannes ’69 ball cap, and her crisp sky-blue oxford is buttoned all the way up over black hot pants so short you can’t see them under the shirt. She’s wearing really, truly, absolutely no makeup. She’d be camera-ready except her eyes—red-rimmed with incipient tears—are a dead giveaway that something isn’t right.

“I dropped the kid at camp, crying, screaming he didn’t want to go in,” she says as she settles onto the stool next to mine at the counter. “So it was very challenging, part of why I’m crying.” Then she had walked back the ten or so blocks to her under-renovation apartment (she’s combining it with the unit next door) to drop off some checks for the contractors and pick up the package she’s now carrying, then back to this café, which is near where she started. Her husband, the gallerist Siniša Mackovic, is currently out of town at an art fair, so she’s been solo parenting. She orders a matcha with extra hot water, and when it comes, she seems immediately restored by the tea the way characters in old British novels are. She cradles the cup in her palms and sits with her endless legs primly crossed. “Okay,” she says. “So what are the questions?” The morning up till now disappears. Chloë Sevigny has arrived at work.