Evie Magazine’s First Party: The Glamorous, Soft-Sell Conservative Party That Brought “Romance” Back to New York Fashion Week
It was just after 8 p.m. on a Sunday when Evie Magazine’s first ever in-person live event finally kicked off. Founded in 2019, the women’s publication once billed itself as a “conservative Cosmo,” and that night, during New York Fashion Week, it drew a crowd of excited fans to the Standard Hotel’s Boom venue in Chelsea for a celebration of the magazine overall, and its brand-new issue specifically.
Outside the venue, guests queued up, pulling fur coats tighter around their formal gowns as organizers checked names off their guest list. A blonde attendee pleaded her way into the VIP section; one event coordinator sprinted downstairs to alert her team that an attendee’s hair had just caught fire. Upstairs, women clustered near the entrance, waiting for their turn to pose for photos in front of an oversized plastic replica of an Evie cover emblazoned with the slogan “Welcome to the Romantic Era.” Its other cover lines? “Your secret feminine power,” “12 ways to make him swoon,” and “Feminine fashion we love: corsets, dresses, & drama.”
The party was co-hosted by Evie’s editor-in-chief Brittany Hugoboom and her husband and co-founder Gabriel Hugoboom. Invitations framed the night as a “celebration of romance & beauty,” promising attendees an “immersive evening” of live music, stunning visuals, engaging performances, catered food and drinks, and a big secret reveal.
Aside from the faint, lingering smell of singed hair and a glowing “EVIE” logo projected above the wraparound gold bar, the event felt indistinguishable from any other trendy Fashion Week party—and that seemed to be the whole point. Openly political talk was virtually nonexistent, and the conservatism lingering in the air had far more to do with the old-Hollywood glamour of Sydney Sweeney than it did with abstinence-only messaging.
But make no mistake: Evie, which critics label an alt-right outlet, is political at its core. It has been widely embraced across multiple factions of the Republican Party: prominent conservatives Candace Owens, Steve Bannon, and Brett Cooper (a commentator who attended the Chelsea party) all publicly champion the magazine. The publication itself peddles conspiracy theories, shares anti-vaccine misinformation, spreads lifestyle inspiration for “tradwives” (think the viral Ballerina Farm trend), rejects modern feminism, and promotes 28, an app the Hugobooms founded that lets users track their menstrual cycles by logging period data. The app, which initially received partial funding from Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, runs ads directly alongside articles that criticize hormonal birth control and pressure women to stop taking the pill. (Brittany Hugoboom told The New York Times she pitched Thiel, who is one of many conservatives alarmed by falling U.S. birth rates, on the country’s “fertility crisis.”)
If that all sounds pretty standard for modern right-wing media, you’re not wrong. What sets Evie apart, beyond its signature dreamy photography of glamorously dressed women milking cows, is that its political content sits side-by-side with casual, traditional women’s magazine listicles: pieces like “7 Questions to Ask Early If You Want a Serious Relationship” or “How to Dress Like Olivia Dean on a Budget.” It’s a masterclass in soft political power: just as mid-century Hollywood films drew audiences first with glitz and glamour, not their underlying anti-communist messaging, Evie’s political strength lies in pretending it has no politics at all.
For many attendees, that intentional lack of overt politics is the entire point—of the party, and of Evie as a whole. “That’s how we shift culture,” one attendee explained, asking to stay anonymous because of the sensitive nature of her career. She credits Evie with kickstarting a Republican cultural revival. “We’ve been so focused on policy that we lost the culture, and we need to take that back if we want to win.” That’s what made this party meaningful. Evie’s brand of “conservatism without conservative labels” has drawn mainstream attention for years, including profiles from dozens of outlets. But now, ahead of a high-stakes midterm election where polls look grim for the GOP, that messaging is less of a novelty and more of a strategic necessity. This party proved the concept works: Evie-ism can be a compelling draw for young women who are unsure what the modern Republican movement stands for.
The anonymous attendee also said Evie’s content just clicks with her. “Evie has done a great job combining fashion, high fashion, beautiful photography, and beautiful art that we as women know and love—we got that from Vogue and other big publications, but we didn’t want to be lectured about values we don’t agree with,” she said.
For subscribers, Brittany Hugoboom is the perfect face for the brand. She opened the party by introducing the new print issue, which centers on sex. (Though sex was the night’s theme, Evie writers and even party guests were quick to clarify that the outlet only approves of sex between married couples.) “We started with a mission to embrace femininity,” Brittany announced. “I think we’re ahead of the curve.”
“We want to officially declare tonight: Romance is back,” Gabriel added.
After the speeches, photos from the new issue were hung and unveiled around the venue. For all the talk of reviving the lost art of feminine mystique, the photos—of a woman in lace smoldering for the camera, her long hair falling into shadow—felt far more like a throwback to the 2002 Victoria’s Secret catalog than anything else.
Given Evie’s focus on catering to young women in the current moment, it’s easy to mistake the party (and its cover shoot) for an event that would have been right at home 15 years ago. Most attendees were young women and men under 30, but the soundtrack consisted of slow, jazzy covers of Lana Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness” and Britney Spears’ …Baby One More Time. The venue, Boom (once famous as the Boom Boom Room), used to be one of New York’s most exclusive nightclubs; today it only hosts private events, and pops up in the cultural consciousness mostly as a spot for post-Met Gala parties.
At the height of the club’s fame in 2010, Gossip Girl—the hit teen drama about wealthy Upper East Side Manhattan students—filmed an episode there. The episode featured a cameo from Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who attended a celebration for the New York Observer and its “bachelor of the year” award. (In real life, Kushner owned the paper at the time, before selling it in 2017 amid accusations of editorial interference.) It’s hard to imagine any member of the Trump family landing a cameo on mainstream TV today, but back then, Donald Trump had not yet been elected president, and the couple had not yet relocated to Florida; they were still widely seen as one of New York’s most enviable social pairs, with Kushner actually the bigger household name of the two at the time.
That made Boom the perfect spot for Evie’s party. Years earlier, a mainstream TV show had already softened the Trumps’ image for mainstream audiences; now the same venue was hosting another event where organizers worked to make conservatism just as palatable, aspirational, and glamorous as any other lifestyle brand.
“I know some women who read Evie who aren’t even conservative, and a lot of the content is just fun, it’s just interesting. But for women who want to be into beauty and also conservative, it’s great that there’s something made for them,” said Lauren Chen, a conservative commentator based in Canada. Chen co-founded Tenet Media, which U.S. federal prosecutors accused in 2024 of receiving funding and direction from a covert Russian influence operation. Chen denied the allegations in a September 2025 post on X.
Even Evie’s most lighthearted, “just for fun” content often reveals a specific conservative worldview, if not open political alignment. Camila Bronson, an aspiring content creator, told me she wrote an article for Evie arguing that “personal alignment is the ultimate political act.” She framed the U.S. government as a bad romantic partner: “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 system, such as regenerative agriculture, learning how to plant, or cooking … little ways, where you build sovereignty in your life, instead of relying on someone else that doesn't really care about you.” It was hard to tell if this was conservatism repackaged as relationship advice, or relationship advice rebranded as conservatism.
Many attendees, though, were just thrilled to be there, far more focused on the corner photo booth and the DJ’s Retrofête outfit than any underlying political messaging. At VIP tables, drooping red anthurium flowers—the same blooms that inspired so many of Georgia O’Keeffe’s yonic paintings—hung above cartons of cigarettes displayed on silver étagère trays. Women carrying Yves Saint Laurent and Prada bags sipped cocktails named “Wild at Heart,” “Decent Proposal,” and “French Kiss.” The non-alcoholic mocktail was called “Sweet Nothing.” A former Miss New York beauty pageant winner milled around the room.
During an outdoor smoke break, a group of men in tuxedos gushed about how much they adore Sydney Sweeney. Attending women wore pieces from brands like Love Shack Fancy, Cult Gaia, and Reformation. I didn’t spot any of Evie’s famous raw milkmaid dresses—a limited-edition fashion drop the magazine released to capitalize on its tradwife content—but it was a late-night Fashion Week event, after all.
“The party felt apolitical, that’s how I felt,” said Pariah the Doll, a New York-based 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 I know from church, but we didn’t discuss politics.” Pariah had just walked in conservative designer Elena Velez’s New York Fashion Week show alongside Clavicular, a popular right-wing streamer who brought “looksmaxxing”—the movement focused exclusively on helping men improve their physical attractiveness—into the mainstream. That manosphere/looksmaxxing lingo even popped up in Gabriel Hugoboom’s speech that night: “We’re definitely mogging on every other event happening tonight,” he told the crowd.
Scrolling through reposted party photos on Evie’s Instagram the next day, the throughline between attendees became clear. One attendee bio read: “I love God, my family, moving my body, optimizing my health.” Others read “Controversial woman of God,” “Jesus Christ - The Way, The Truth, and The Life,” and “Aspiring trophy wife, lover of Jesus.” Some partygoers, per their Instagram profiles, were primarily working models.
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