The Women, The Myths, The Legends: Haley Wollens & Chloë Sevigny Launch Myth “Magazine” During NYFW

Who better to collaborate on a new mag than one of New York’s most instantly recognizable cover girls? As such, Chloë Sevigny was the first to raise her hand to team up with her longtime style-simpatico Haley Wollens on a new “magazine”—air quotes fully intended.

While Saturday saw the project officially launch, fronted by a claw-nailed and near-topless Mariacarla Boscono and featuring collaborators including Sevigny and Telfar Clemens, don’t go calling into Casa Magazines for it anytime soon because, as the tagline reads: it’s not on newsstands. The only way to really christen the dynamic publication’s arrival was to throw a thumping rager on Saturday night of NYFW, one that brought out models, photographers, designers, writers, and artists in their droves.

So, what is Myth? A year in the making by Wollens, whose clients include Bella Hadid's Orebella, Mugler, Dsquared, and who has shaped the fashion narrative for artists including Drake, Miley Cyrus, and M.I.A, it’s a shapeshifting online publication that weaves in video, sound, and a fluttering butterfly emoticon. In other words, if performance art, Tumblr, and a conceptual high fashion magazine had a baby, it might look a little like mythmagazine dot com.

“I’ve been in the game years,” Wollens told Vogue, nestled into one of Holiday Bar’s white leather banquettes while the dance floor heaves to intense drum and bass music. “I’ve been styling for over ten years—I’ve shot so many editorials, and I just wanted to create a new platform for putting out work.”

Going the digital-only route gives Wollens and her clique more room for creativity, while having fun with it. Case in point: to tease the non-magazine magazine in a very tongue-in-cheek way, they enlisted the viral Instagram personality @IamNotKateMoss for a series of clips. “Being online means the possibilities are endless. It makes the edit different too, because a page count is irrelevant, but there’s still a permanence and a relevance,” Wollens says.

When it came to working with Sevigny on the inaugural issue, Wollens knew it needed to be more than a typical editorial shoot. Instead, the Myth team created an ad for Sevigny’s fragrance, Little Flower, but an ad that also features video and sound. Wollens says the intent was to mimic that feel of flipping through a fresh issue of Vogue and seeing all the luxury advertisements each month, but "then adding video makes it so bombastic and exciting,” she laughed. “It’s a vibe shift. We want to lead by example and show a new way of creating culture, creating brand awareness, and staying with the times.”

Out in the smoking area holding court in Uggs and a white tee with Milton Glaser’s famed I <3 NY logo, Sevigny said only Wollens, her long-time stylist and fellow native East Village kid, could pull a project this ambitious off. “She has the best taste, the best style, and she is the coolest, period. New York needs this,” she said. Elsewhere in the room, another notable New York-born fashion week fixture, Natasha Lyonne, was channeling aggressively cool energy too, in a floor-length chubby fur coat having come straight from the Khaite show nearby.

Naturally, Wollens was wearing a look straight off the runway as well. Dressed in a cut-out and backless number from Women’s History Museum, who she says are the most exciting designers of the moment in her eyes, it was emblazoned with the words “New York: first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

It wouldn’t be a fashion week bash without a step and repeat and a chance to share a snap from whatever epic party you spent your night at. So Myth made sure everyone could leave with their own memento to post online, in the form of a glass photo booth, which allowed guests to pose in their own cover shoot—a challenge most took to with aplomb. “This is for the Sweet 16th I never had,” Wollens joked.