If Chloë Sevigny could do it again, she would have taken that role in Legally Blonde—the movie, not the musical. But the 34-year-old icon is fine with inching into the mainstream, particularly as her astounding street credibility defies expiration. There was the comfortable upbringing in Darien, Connecticut; the internship at Sassy; the Jay McInerney profile in The New Yorker; the streak of independent-minded performances in films from Kids to Dogville; the Oscar nomination for Boys Don’t Cry; and all of the elegantly backward and forward style choices that have defined her public persona.

At the time of our meeting, in an empty bar during the daylight hours of an East Village weekday, Sevigny is at the end of her hiatus from Big Love, readying to shoot the fourth season of the critically acclaimed HBO polygamy drama. She has also completed three films: Mr. Nice, a biopic about the hashish smuggler and counterculture icon Howard Marks (played by Rhys Ifans), in which she appears as the long-suffering wife; Werner Herzog’s true-crime story, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done; and her first comedy, Barry Munday, about a man who “severs off his bottom privates.”

Over the course of the conversation, Sevigny says she does not believe she is the descendant of seventeenth-century French aris-tocrats (Madame de Sevigne and so on); shares that her parents bought her Martin Margiela cloven boots from IF Boutique in SoHo for her eighteenth birthday (she made her own version of a Margiela outfit, involving a twig, for her high school gradua-tion); and graciously recites some of the lore of her extraordinary formative years, particularly the relationships that led to her asso-ciation with Kim Gordon’s streetwear line, X-girl.

She also discusses her fashion project, called Chloë Sevigny for Opening Ceremony, which delivers its second collection this fall, a unisex line that serves boys and girls a selection of leopard-print cardigans, dyed thermals, resurrected Bass two-tone loaf-ers, and perfect wedge buckle boots that look like they creeped out of the stock room at Trash & Vaudeville. Like the debut in-stallment in 2007—a striking capsule of women’s pieces distinguished by a carefully calibrated awkwardness—the work is not about fantasies of adulthood but the reinvention of adolescence. It’s an excep-tionally pure product, coming from a woman with unparalleled tales of youth. And it’s all the result of Chloë offhandedly mention-ing her interest in collaborating with the downtown boutique Opening Ceremony to a fashion reporter. Co-owner Humberto Leon called the next day.

What other things do you want to do that might benefit from a press mention? I don’t know. You think if I say it, it will come true?

You’ve mentioned that a collaboration with a high-end fashion company would interest you. I’d like to do accessories, maybe bags or shoes. But if I do clothes, it will always be with Opening Ceremony. I’m not a designer. I’m not going to do high fashion. It’s streetwear. I just want to make staple pieces that have trendy appeal that people will want to wear every day. I’m no Balenciaga. I’m no Nicolas Ghesquière.

Are there any good untapped collaborations left? I have a couple vintage NaNa boots that I’ve been wearing a lot lately, and they’re so good. But I don’t even know if that company still exists. I would like Opening Ceremony to reissue all the old Vision Streetwear. And I want to do something with Levi’s, like jackets or an old straight-leg, kind of skinhead-style jean. We actually talked to them before Opening Ceremony, but it didn’t work out.

Are you pursuing any of these things? No. I’ve never pursued much in my life [laughs]. Things often kind of happened. I mean, I’m very focused and I work hard at what I do, but almost every job I’ve ever had, they’ve offered. I’ve never gotten a job off an audition. Even though I audition a lot, or have.

Never? Maybe Last Days of Disco.