Remembering X-girl’s notorious 1994 fashion show, which starred a pre-fame Chloë Sevigny

Ringer tees, the era’s beloved indie rock staple, but cut short for a women’s body. Five-pocket jeans that the designer tells MTV are a complete knock-off of an old Levi’s style. A simple white mini-dress, recast as a contemporary bridal situation and modelled by a pre-New Yorker profile Chloë Sevigny, her blonde bob sprayed pink at the roots and a chic ribbon-wrapped bouquet in her hand.

Though X-girl had officially arrived a year earlier, its 1994 fashion show – comprising just 20 looks and spilling over a Manhattan sidewalk, somewhere down the street from where Marc Jacobs was presenting his A/W 1994 collection – served as an announcement of sorts, underlining its intentions as a label that wasn’t about to take itself too seriously.

‘X-girl Show’: documenting the cult New York label’s 1994 fashion show

‘It wasn't something Grace Coddington was going to wear, it was something Kim Gordon and Sofia Coppola were going to wear,’ offers the photographer and IDEA co-founder, Angela Hill, who has authored a new book, titled X-girl Show, documenting the 1994 happening. ‘It was just right, it felt so easy to have fun in. And it had that fantastic combination of the indie music scene and Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, all these characters.’

The sartorial love child of the Sonic Youth bassist and stylist Daisy von Furth, X-girl began as a counterpart to the men’s skate brand X-large, which Eli Bonerz and Adam Silverman had launched in 1991, backed by Beastie Boys’ Mike D. Their graphics, typically found front and centre on baby tees, were designed by the director Mike Mills, while Sevigny, a frequent guest on von Furth’s couch at the time, was the fit model in residence; Coppola, meanwhile, already the label’s diehard fan, was the catalyst for the 1994 show together with then boyfriend, Spike Jonze.

‘We were all spinning around Sonic Youth’s orbit; Spike having co-directed 100% and Sofia and myself starring in the Mildred Pierce and Sugar Kane videos,’ recalls Sevigny, revisiting the moment for the introduction of Hill’s new book. ‘Sofia and Spike were courting and conceived the show as a chance to spend some time together, at least that was the rumour.’ For her part, Hill, then in the early stages of setting up a magazine with a flatmate, New York meant research and she was keen to immerse herself in everything the city had to offer.

‘We were going to shows, talking to artists, meeting people. I was massively interested in everything that was going on that was new and a little bit underground,’ she explains. ‘I always had a camera on me anyway, so we just showed up [that day in Manhattan] and I took pictures. It definitely was not a big thing.’

Marrying skate aesthetics with Godard accents, tomboy playfulness and a feminine sensibility – additionally, as von Furth described to MTV, leaning into the ‘preppy boarding school look circa 1978’ – X-girl was quickly embraced by women who’d until that point been folding in the waistband of borrowed menswear; fans of streetwear for whom streetwear hadn’t yet catered, and others intrigued by this new look von Furth was building in her work as a stylist.

‘[It was] a new look that would come to epitomise the 1990s indie aesthetic,’ writes Sevigny. ‘Kim and Daisy’s combined love of the perfect A-line dress, a snug ringer shirt, and eye for great graphics, was a sure-fire hit for making the girls happy.’ Then primarily dressing in Commes des Garçons and vintage (the former on account of a Saturday job at Browns), Hill would later join their pack, picking up a tartan skirt suit by X-girl from London’s Slam City Skates.

‘It felt buzzy, for want of a better phrase. There were so many people there and so much happening,’ continues the photographer, relaying the scene in SoHo. Produced by Coppola and Jonze – without permits and just a spray-painted bedsheet, reportedly stolen from the Paramount Hotel, signposting it – the event’s proximity to the Marc Jacobs show ensured a crowd of celebrities passed by; Kyle MacLachlan and Linda Evangelista, Frances Ford Coppola, Steven Meisel, and the late street photographer Bill Cunningham each make cameos in the new book.

‘You were in the place where cool people were, basically, it was where it was happening,’ says Hill. ‘And it wasn't a standard fashion show formula, it was much more ad hoc. I just joined in, and forgot I did it.’ Indeed, she only rediscovered the negatives last Christmas, in a forgotten box that had been rescued from a flood in her mother’s basement.

In 1998, X-girl as it had been wrapped proceedings following its sale to a Japanese company, but its influence continued to inform fashion, style and wider pop culture: near immediately after the 1994 show, Coppola launched her own label, Milk Fed, which British fans at the time could purchase alongside X-girl at Pippa Brooks’ cult Soho boutique, Shop; more recently, in the past decade, VFiles and Opening Ceremony have each paid tribute by releasing X-girl collaborations. Moreover, the aesthetic that Gordon and von Furth helped engineer remains a touchpoint for teenagers and young women today, facilitated by cyclical trends, social media, and largely the lore of Chloë Sevigny.

‘This book is not perfect in my eyes,’ reflects Hill, acknowledging the water damage suffered by the negatives and the various backs of heads she captured, ‘but I just hope it gets the energy across, the spirit. It was a lovely time.’

X-girl Show, a book by Angela Hill, introduced by Chloë Sevigny, is published by IDEA in a limited edition of 500, details at IDEA Books