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

Just after 8:00 pm on Sunday night, Evie Magazine’s first live event was finally getting started. The women’s magazine, which was founded in 2019 and once described itself as a “conservative Cosmo,” welcomed eager fans to celebrate the publication, generally, and its new issue, specifically, during New York Fashion Week at the Standard Hotel’s Boom in Chelsea.

Guests lined up outside, hugging fur coats around formal dresses, as hosts scanned a list for their names. One blonde woman begged for access to the VIP section; an event planner ran downstairs to tell her coworkers that someone’s hair had caught on fire. Upstairs, women crowded the entrance for the chance to be photographed against a larger-than-life plastic Evie Magazine cover that declared, “Welcome to the Romantic Era.” (The other cover lines: “‘Your secret feminine power,” “12 ways to make him swoon,” and “Feminine fashion we love: corsets, dresses, & drama.”)

The party was hosted by Brittany Hugoboom, the editor in chief, and her cofounder and husband Gabriel Hugoboom. The invitation billed it as a “celebration of romance & beauty,” with attendees promised an “immersive night of live music, gorgeous visuals, captivating performances, delicious food and drinks, and a secret reveal.”

Aside from the lingering stench of burnt hair and the prominent “EVIE” projected above the wraparound gold bar, it was hard to distinguish the event from any other party, which certainly seemed like the point. There was virtually no overt mention of politics, and the kind of conservatism in the air had more to do with Sydney Sweeney than abstinence.

But Evie, which critics call “alt-right,” is inherently political. Evie has been soundly embraced by different corners of the Republican Party: Candace Owens, Steve Bannon, and Brett Cooper—a conservative commentator who attended the party—all champion Evie. The magazine itself, meanwhile, traffics in 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, where users log information about their periods to calculate their menstrual cycle. Advertisements for the app, which was initially funded in part by Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel, run next to articles that criticize hormonal birth control and push women to get off the pill. (Brittany Hugoboom told The New York Times that she pitched Thiel, one of many conservatives concerned about declining US birthrates, on the “fertility crisis.”)

If you think all of this sounds more or less like what you’d get from any right-wing media enterprise these days, you’d be correct. What distinguishes Evie, aside from its unusual soft-focus photography of glamorously dressed women milking cows, is that this sort of content runs alongside listicles titled, for example, “7 Questions to Ask Early If You Want a Serious Relationship” or “How to Dress Like Olivia Dean on a Budget.” It’s a classic example of soft power in action—just as the appeal of mid-century Hollywood films wasn’t necessarily the anti-Communist messaging but the glitz and glamour, the strength of Evie’s politics are in its pretense that it doesn’t have any.

To many attendees, that is the goal not just of the party, but of Evie in general. “That’s how we shift the culture,” said one attendee, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of her career. She credited Evie with the beginning of a Republican cultural revival. “We’ve been so policy-focused that we lost the culture, and we need to take that back if we want to win.” That’s what made this party notable. Evie’s conservatism-without-conservatism messaging has long drawn attention (including profiles by numerous publications). But now, going into a consequential midterm election in which the polls look grim for the GOP, that messaging seems less a curiosity than a necessity. Here at least was proof of the concept that Evie-ism can make a compelling backdrop for young women unsure about what the Republican movement means to them.

The anonymous attendee also told me Evie’s content really just resonated with her. “Evie has done a great job of combining the fashion, the high fashion, the beautiful photography, and beautiful art that we as women know and love that we were getting from the Vogues, but we didn't want to be lectured about the values that we don't agree with,” she said.

For subscribers, there is no better messenger than the editor in chief, who introduced the print cover at the beginning of the party for the new, sex-themed issue. (While sex was the topic of the evening, Evie articles and even guests at the party were quick to assure me that it’s an activity for married couples only.) “We started with a mission to embrace femininity,” Brittany Hugoboom announced. “I think we’re ahead of the curve.”

“We want to officially declare tonight: Romance is back,” added Gabriel Hugoboom.

Photographs from the new issue were then physically unveiled around the room. For all the talk of the lost art of the feminine mystique, the photographs, featuring a woman clad in lace smoldering at the camera with her long hair tossed into the shadows, more than anything recalled the lost arts of the Victoria’s Secret catalog circa 2002.

With Evie’s emphasis on appealing to the young woman of the moment, you would be forgiven for thinking that not just the cover shoot but the party had taken place 15 years ago. While attendees appeared to be young women and men primarily under the age of 30, slow, jazzy covers of Lana Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness” and Britney Spears’ “Hit Me Baby One More Time” played over the speakers. The event space, Boom—formerly known as the Boom Boom Room—used to be one of New York’s most exclusive clubs; it’s now for private events only and appears in the cultural zeitgeist periodically as a post–Met Gala party location.

At the peak of the club’s fame in 2010, Gossip Girl, a teen soap opera about privileged students on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, filmed an episode there, featuring a cameo from Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in which they celebrated the New York Observer and its bachelor of the year award. (In real life, Kushner still owned the newspaper, before he sold it in 2017 amidst accusations of editorial interference.) It’s difficult to imagine any members of the Trump family receiving a role on mainstream television these days, but in those days Donald Trump was not president, and the couple, who had not yet fled for Florida, was still enjoying their role as an enviable pair in the city’s social hierarchy. In context, in fact, Kushner’s was the bolder-faced name.

It felt extra fitting, then, for Boom, where a mainstream show had sanitized the Trumps years before, to be the site of yet another celebration where its hosts strove to make conservatism as palatable, envy-inducing, and glamorous as possible.

“I know some women who read Evie who aren't even conservative, and a lot of the content for Evie, it's just fun, it's just interesting. But for women who want to be into beauty and conservative, it's great that they ask for that type of thing,” said Lauren Chen, a conservative commentator from Canada. Chen cofounded Tenet Media, which US federal prosecutors alleged in 2024 was receiving funding and guidance from a covert Russian influence operation. In a post on X in September 2025, Chen denied the allegations.

Even the simply fun and interesting content from Evie often betrays, if not political leanings, at least a sensibility. One aspiring content creator, Camila Bronson, told me she wrote an article for Evie about “why personal alignment is the ultimate political act.” She basically posited the government as a bad boyfriend: “When you are sovereign in yourself, you don’t need to be controlled by a government. So it’s about becoming ungovernable, and finding ways to be more independent of the grid, such as regenerative agriculture, learning how to plant, or cooking … little ways, where you build sovereignty in your life, instead of, like, relying on, you know, someone else that doesn't really care about you.” Whether this was conservativism as relationship advice or the reverse was hard to say.

Many attendees, though, just seemed thrilled to be there, less concerned with any political underpinnings than with the photo booth in the corner and the DJ wearing Retrofête. At the VIP tables, red anthurium flowers—the very perennials that inspired numerous yonic Georgia O’Keefe paintings—drooped above cigarette cartons served on silver étagère trays. Women sporting Yves Saint Laurent and Prada bags sipped cocktails named “Wild at Heart,” “Decent Proposal,” and “French Kiss.” The mocktail was called “Sweet Nothing.” A former Miss New York beauty pageant winner walked around the room.

While on a smoke break, several tuxedo-suited men fawned over how much they liked Sydney Sweeney. Women were clad in Love Shack Fancy, Cult Gaia, and Reformation. I didn’t see any of Evie’s famous raw milkmaid dresses—a limited-edition fashion drop from the magazine that capitalized on tradwife content—but it was nighttime and also Fashion Week.

“The party was apolitical, that's how I felt,” said Pariah the Doll, a New York model and artist known for detransitioning. But, they added, “Everyone I knew there was from Republican circles. I saw people I knew from the Republican Club gala. I saw people that I know from church, but we didn't discuss politics.” Pariah just walked in conservative designer Elena Velez’s New York Fashion Week show with Clavicular, a streamer popular on the right wing who has brought “looksmaxxing”—the singular focus on men increasing their physical attractiveness—to the mainstream. (The language that’s come from the looksmaxxing or manosphere communities cropped up at the party: “We’re definitely mogging on every other event happening tonight,” Gabriel Hugoboom said in his speech.)

Scrolling through the reposted photographs on Evie’s Instagram the day after the party, the accounts started to blend. “I love God, my family, moving my body, optimizing my health,” read one Instagram bio. “Controversial woman of God,” “Jesus Christ - The Way, The Truth, and The Life,” and “Aspiring trophy wife, lover of Jesus” read more. Other partygoers, according to Instagram, had mainly been models.

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