That time Sofia Coppola organised a fashion show in downtown New York X-Girl, the brand that created streetstyle for girls

In the 1990s, something happened that now would have driven all girls passionate about vintage fashion, Sofia Coppola, Chloë Sevigny, and New York crazy. It was 1994, and X-Girl, a sister brand of X-LARGE (founded in 1991 by Eli Bonerz and Adam Silverman), had just been born. Founded by Kim Gordon of the Sonic Youth and Daisy von Furth, the brand is still considered one of the pioneers of women’s street style, with collections inspired by youth culture at the time, blending sports, music, the outdoors, and subcultures. In the same year of the opening of its first store in Los Feliz, Los Angeles, X-Girl held its first fashion show, an event that brought together some of the biggest names in fashion and cinema of the decade on the streets of the Big Apple. In Soho, one of the city’s most popular neighborhoods, during New York Fashion Week – but strictly off the official calendar – and with the help of none other than directors Sofia Coppola and Spike Jonze, the brand’s first collection was presented, an event still visible on YouTube thanks to a documentary film that captures all the chaos and iconicity of that day. With Chloë Sevigny (a close friend of the brand and its designers) on the runway, it could only be a success.

Every element of the X-Girl show in Soho was iconic: the date, the people involved, the guerrilla style of the show, but also the people who happened to be there by chance. Just two days after the death of Kurt Cobain, the artist who most embodied the irreverent and rebellious spirit of 1990s America, Sofia Coppola and Spike Jonze decided to have the models walk right outside the venue of Marc Jacobs’ show. It is said that, at the end of the American designer’s show, Linda Evangelista, the Beastie Boys, and Cindy Crawford, among others, suddenly found themselves thrown into a different kind of fashion, told by none other than one of the most iconic filmmakers of the era. «Our friend Marc Jacobs just had a show down the street», Coppola said to the camera. «You, too, can do a fashion show». It is even said that during the runway show Sevigny grabbed the camera and snuck into the hotel where Marc Jacobs’ presentation had taken place, filming the entire audience leaving the building, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Campbell, Donald Trump, Marc Jacobs himself, and press figures like Suzy Menkes and André Leon Talley.

«We’re sick of flannel and skinny black jeans and that whole East Village rocker look», said Kim Gordon and Daisy von Furth. In search of clothing that could channel the same style as New York skaters, but made for the body of a girl, the two founders launched a line that included skate skirts and crop tops, A-line dresses and tight micro shorts. It was as if all the twenty-somethings in New York had raided their brothers’ closets and shrunk baggy jeans and t-shirts to make them sexier. But nothing about X-Girl’s design was casual: just think that the graphics were created by Mike Mills, videographer and graphic designer who had worked with creatives such as Yoko Ono, The Beastie Boys and – again – Marc Jacobs. For the face depicted in the X-Girl logo, still used by the brand today, Mills was inspired by Michelle Rockwood, an artist and friend of the designer.

In the preface of X-GIRL SHOW, the book by Angela Hill that recounts that day, Chloë Sevigny recalls: «We were all spinning around Sonic Youth’s orbit, Spike Jonze having co-directed 100% and Sofia Coppola and myself starring in the Mildred Pierce and Sugar Kane videos. Sofia and Spike were courting and conceived the show as a chance to spend some time together, at least that was the rumor. Daisy von Furth, the co-designer and mastermind behind X-Girl, was indie royalty: her sister Julie was of Pussy Galore and Free Kitten fame. Daisy was styling all the rockers and forging a new look that would come to epitomize the 90s indie aesthetic. 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. West Coast nepo babies met with NY indie kids to profess that streetwear also belonged to the girls. They weren’t necessarily interested in doing a ‘fashion show’ but the enthusiasm of the courting couple was contagious. […] No one quite remembers who added the baby barrettes, they were more Courtney Love’s thing.»

Thus, after years of grunge, of ruined, heavy, oversized combat boots, of flannel shirts and ill-fitting jeans, in New York a new fashion was born right on the city streets, just a few steps away from the fashion system elites gathered for Fashion Week. X-Girl is still an active brand today, although in 1998 it was acquired by Japanese entrepreneurs. Walking around Tokyo, where some of the brand’s flagship stores stand, one can still feel what remains of the 1990s New York energy, of the teenage girls and twenty-somethings who were about to change the history of women’s fashion, from glamour and grunge to preppy – what, today, we might call coquette.