W Hotels

Laura: Spin a yarn with me: In this W Hotels campaign, what role do you imagine you’re prepping for with that pile of ’90s vintage?

  
Chloё: [laughs] I mean, I’m really into Lisa Kudrow and The Comeback. It could be something as absurd as someone reliving their heyday and their youth. I also love a Freaky Friday vibe. I’m thinking of someone trying to recapture something, which so often people do when they’re traveling because traveling is such an opportunity for fantasy and to slip into another role. I, for one, am very into packing when I go away. I want to have very specific looks—one per day and night, depending on where I’m going. I think checking into a hotel really provides you with that opportunity to make up your own story and be a version of yourself that you want to be, because it’s so concise what you have with you.
  

Do you actually storyboard outfits when you travel? Are you that organized?

  
I’m pretty OCD, yeah [laughs]. If I’m going away for my bachelorette weekend or my birthday weekend, I know we’re having a certain amount of dinners and things like that. If I’m going to Hollywood and I’m going to be having meetings with executives or Hollywood types, there’s a certain image that I want to project. I try to dress nice on the plane because my mom always told me that people will treat you better if you look nicer. So I try not to go schlumpy, although sometimes it does happen.
  

Do you embrace the pageantry of unpacking into a hotel closet?

  
I do. I’ve heard that some hotels offer this unpacking service, but I’ve never taken advantage of that. One day I’d like to try it.
  

The tagline of the W Hotels campaign is “You Had to Be There”—and in some pivotal moments of New York history, you have been. Picking up the ’90s thread, what comes to mind as early style influences?

  
I feel like I’ve gone through so many incarnations. First and foremost, as my first youth-culture experiment outside of dressing like everybody else, I did a deep dive into alternative culture, whatever that meant then. It was a New Wave kind of style—I think that’s my base layer. I won’t just buy an oxford; I’ll buy a Doc Marten something. I can’t ever shake that loose. Even at 50, I’m trying to adopt a more mature uniform, but it’s very hard for me to let go of the young, alternative person that’s still inside of me. Now, it’s really confusing because everybody dresses however—the references aren’t attached to specific styles of music like they were when I was a kid. It was so important and told the world so much about who you were, and it really defined us in a way. Now it seems like all of those lines are really blurred.
  

Speaking of music and fashion, when you appeared in the Sonic Youth video, were you wearing things that felt emblematic of your style then? Or were you slipping into a role?

  
I actually wore a lot of my own clothes. Late in high school, I was very into the ’70s ringer tees. I was also really into hip-hop culture and De La Soul and Tribe and that whole crew, so I was doing a baggy pant and a beanie. My style references were coming. I was also a hippie kid, so I was into quilted whatever. And then I was exposed to Maison Martin Margiela and Comme des Garçons, so I was trying to incorporate some sort of deconstruction because I thought that whole movement was interesting. It was really a hodgepodge of different things. But the best thing about that video was the idea that the fashion industry plucks this girl from the street because her style’s so great, and then they exploit it and market it and make it into their own. And it’s what happened to me, in a way. That video just became kind of my life story.
  

Is there a piece of clothing from that era that feels emblematic? Maybe you still have it, or maybe it’s immortalized in a photo?

  
I have a large collection of those T-shirts, like a rainbow-colored T-shirt I wore in Sassy magazine when they featured me as their intern. There’s the ringer that I wore Kids, the blue with the white—that was mine and I still have it. I loaned it recently to the Museum of the City of New York for an exhibition they did on New York and popular culture, which was really exciting. There’s this other tank top with a star on the front that I wore on a record cover, and then Larry Clark took these famous pictures of me in his apartment when I was in high school, and I still have that. We’re working on a book with IDEA Books where we’re going to incorporate a lot of that stuff. For some reason, T-shirts always come back, so graphic and simple.
  

I should say: We’re talking about the ’90s because of the W Hotels campaign, not just because people are obsessed with you in the ’90s.

  
I know, I know, it’s fine. I forgive you [laughs].
  

Were there specific people back then who you looked to in matters of style?

  
I was obsessed with—I don’t want to be so obscure, but—Melanie Ward, the stylist; Corinne Day, the fashion photographer. I mean, Courtney Love, Kim Gordon. Friends of mine like Liz Goldwyn or Rita Ackermann. People that were in my life that I thought were always dressing really interesting, like Susan Cianciolo and Bernadette Corporation. Sinéad O’Connor and MC Lyte—it was kind of all over the map. I also worked at Polo Ralph Lauren in high school, and I was really into how the hip-hop kids in New York wore head-to-toe Polo. They were called the Lo Lifes. This certain sect of youth culture adopting this über preppy brand as their own—I thought was really a powerful kind of movement. I used to incorporate it in my own way and would often wear Polo that I found at thrift stores to the mall where I worked. Martin Margiela was my beacon, and I got to be in one of his shows at a store that used to be on 57th called Charivari. It was like a pre-Barneys—a tiny kind of department store.
  

What else was in your shopping rolodex then?

  
I definitely went to Pat Field’s. I would go to Domsey’s, which was a buy-vintage-by-the-pound kind of place in Brooklyn. I had a whole circuit around Manhattan of places that I would go, like Love Saves the Day. But I was more into hardcore thrifting: Salvation Army, Goodwill. You could find real treasures, and they were really cheap. So I was a “digger,” I guess you call them now.
  

In the spirit of loving actresses à la your Instagram series, whose style have you appreciated, onscreen or off?

  
Well, my favorite fashion has always been in Fassbinder movies. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, especially. The Marriage of Maria Braun. Veronika Voss. He always really celebrated women, and he always had really interesting fashion. One of my favorite styles is 1970s-does-’40s, be it Yves Saint Laurent or a Fassbinder movie or even a Woody Allen movie. That always captivates me. Lately I’ve been really into just how these young girls are so empowered. When I was a young actress, going to Hollywood events felt so different because of the power dynamics. I mean, they’re still there, but not how they were when I was younger. Now you can see how empowered these girls are, like Hunter Schafer or Rowan Blanchard; I love Hari Nef. There’s this young crew coming up that are just not afraid to make bold statements. I think in the ’90s, it was kind of like you wanted people to project onto you—so if you had too much individuality, you were afraid it would get in the way of getting parts. I feel like that doesn’t exist so much anymore, so it’s very exciting.
  

Do you have any favorite costume souvenirs from set?

  
Oddly, I haven’t really hung on to that much, which seems strange considering my relationship to fashion. I have my uniform from The Dead Don’t Die, both as a regular cop and when I’ve turned into this zombie, which is kind of funny to have. But a lot of times I just wasn’t offered things. I really like my merch, though. I have a whole box. A Last Days of Disco hat and the first Kids hats. Big Love softball team merch. I have the backs from all my director’s chairs. I even have a Bones and All weird keychain that mimicked—remember how the villain in that saved the hair of his victims? Hopefully one day, if my son thinks I’m cool, it would be more fun for him to wear something like that than to have a garment from a movie. Which is why maybe you save it—I don’t know.
  

What day of your life has felt the most storyboarded in terms of its fashion? And does that feel not dissimilar from your film work?

  
Every day of my life is storyboarded [laughs]. But big days, of course, like my 50th birthday, definitely stand out. My wedding day, even the first garment I put on to go have my hair and makeup done was a Simone Rocha white cotton shift dress with this really pronounced eyelet collar and a denim Margiela Artisanal vest over it. I was like, I just want everything that I grace my body with on this very holy day to have some significance to me. It was really nice to be in those beautiful garments made by these people that I so admired.