Burnt Hair and Soft Power: A Night Out With Evie Magazine

Just aft 8:00 p.m. connected Sunday night, Evie Magazine’s archetypal unrecorded lawsuit was yet getting started. The women’s magazine, which was founded successful 2019 and erstwhile described itself arsenic a “conservative Cosmo,” welcomed anxious fans to observe the publication, generally, and its caller issue, specifically, during New York Fashion Week astatine the Standard Hotel’s Boom successful Chelsea.

Guests lined up outside, hugging fur coats astir ceremonial dresses, arsenic hosts scanned a database for their names. One blonde pistillate begged for entree to the VIP section; an lawsuit planner ran downstairs to archer her coworkers that someone’s hairsbreadth had caught connected fire. Upstairs, women crowded the entranceway for the accidental to beryllium photographed against a larger-than-life integrative Evie Magazine screen that declared, “Welcome to the Romantic Era.” (The different screen lines: “‘Your concealed feminine power,” “12 ways to marque him swoon,” and “Feminine manner we love: corsets, dresses, & drama.”)

The enactment was hosted by Brittany Hugoboom, the exertion successful chief, and her cofounder and hubby Gabriel Hugoboom. The invitation billed it arsenic a “celebration of romance & beauty,” with attendees promised an “immersive nighttime of unrecorded music, gorgeous visuals, captivating performances, delicious nutrient and drinks, and a concealed reveal.”

Aside from the lingering stench of burnt hairsbreadth and the salient “EVIE” projected supra the wraparound golden bar, it was hard to separate the lawsuit from immoderate different party, which surely seemed similar the point. There was virtually nary overt notation of politics, and the benignant of conservatism successful the aerial had much to bash with Sydney Sweeney than abstinence.

But Evie, which critics telephone “alt-right,” is inherently political. Evie has been soundly embraced by antithetic corners of the Republican Party: Candace Owens, Steve Bannon, and Brett Cooper—a blimpish commentator who attended the party—all champion Evie. The mag itself, meanwhile, traffics successful conspiracy theories, shares anti-vaccine content, dispenses tradwife inspo (remember Ballerina Farm?), rejects “modern” feminism, and pushes an app founded by the Hugobooms called 28, wherever users log accusation astir their periods to cipher their menstrual cycle. Advertisements for the app, which was initially funded successful portion by Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel, tally adjacent to articles that knock hormonal commencement power and propulsion women to get disconnected the pill. (Brittany Hugoboom told The New York Times that she pitched Thiel, 1 of galore conservatives acrophobic astir declining US birthrates, connected the “fertility crisis.”)

If you deliberation each of this sounds much oregon little similar what you’d get from immoderate right-wing media endeavor these days, you’d beryllium correct. What distinguishes Evie, speech from its antithetic soft-focus photography of glamorously dressed women milking cows, is that this benignant of contented runs alongside listicles titled, for example, “7 Questions to Ask Early If You Want a Serious Relationship” oregon “How to Dress Like Olivia Dean connected a Budget.” It’s a classical illustration of brushed powerfulness successful action—just arsenic the entreaty of mid-century Hollywood films wasn’t needfully the anti-Communist messaging but the glitz and glamour, the spot of Evie’s authorities are successful its pretense that it doesn’t person any.

To galore attendees, that is the extremity not conscionable of the party, but of Evie successful general. “That’s however we displacement the culture,” said 1 attendee, who asked to stay anonymous owed to the delicate quality of her career. She credited Evie with the opening of a Republican taste revival. “We’ve been truthful policy-focused that we mislaid the culture, and we request to instrumentality that backmost if we privation to win.” That’s what made this enactment notable. Evie’s conservatism-without-conservatism messaging has agelong drawn attraction (including profiles by galore publications). But now, going into a consequential midterm predetermination successful which the polls look grim for the GOP, that messaging seems little a curiosity than a necessity. Here astatine slightest was impervious of the conception that Evie-ism tin marque a compelling backdrop for young women unsure astir what the Republican question means to them.