The Architecture of Institution-Building
Evie Magazine as a Case Study
On February 17, Evie Magazine announced a front-page feature in the Wall Street Journal. The piece, written by Olivia Empson and featuring photos from Huy Luong, profiled the magazine under the headline aligned directly to its statement of purpose. A “conservative Cosmo” meeting its cultural moment.
The same day, Evie’s founder Brittany Hugoboom tweeted about a Vanity Fair profile, her first major U.S. feature since a New York Times piece the previous year. The Vanity Fair profile was written by Marisa Meltzer, a writer whose previous work includes stories for The New York Times, New Yorker, The Guardian, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, and Vogue.
These two pieces framed the beginning and end of Evie’s first large scale live event, called Eros, held during New York Fashion Week. The Eros event attracted hundreds of attendees, press, and a notable number of high-profile conservative media figures including Brett Cooper. Within hours of the WSJ piece, the article was being amplified across conservative social media by an unusual coalition including Jack Posobiec, Mike Cernovich, Milo Yiannopoulos, Lauren Chen, New Founding’s Nathan Halberstadt, and Joshua Lisec, among others. Brittany Hugoboom reposted each of them. This, despite their event advertising garnering minimal engagement.
On the surface, this appears to be the organic celebration of a conservative project breaking through into prestige media and being celebrated by the movement it serves, but that reading may be incomplete.
While this may have been a spontaneous wellspring of good press and genuine enthusiasm, certain elements of the story are worth examining more closely, because they reveal something about how the world works regardless of how coordinated it was.
A simultaneous Wall Street Journal feature and a Vanity Fair profile do not materialize out of an abundance of willpower and good vibes. Prestige media does not coordinate around the editorial calendar of a niche conservative women’s magazine. It is therefore quite likely that someone placed them, something that requires serious mainstream media relationships--the kind of relationships that most (truly) conservative media organizations do not have and cannot easily build.
In addition, the figures who boosted Evie’s moment in the days following the WSJ piece do not typically coordinate.
Matthew J. Peterson, former editor of The Blaze used it as the occasion for a declarative statement that the right needs “aspirational, normal lifestyle content--not commentary ranting about the framework established by the other side.” He went further, calling on the right to “build our own Politico, Axios, etc.” It reads to me as a thesis statement in search of a funder.
Jack Posobiec tweeted in support. Cernovich shared the WSJ link with no commentary. Milo Yiannopoulos, whose media instincts are as sharp as his reputation is scandalous, tagged Hugoboom directly and shared the WSJ photograph. Alex Clark used the moment to publish a lengthy thread cataloging her own history of championing the cultural positions Evie represents.
These are people who operate in different orbits, have different audiences, and even sometimes have conflicting political interests. Their simultaneous engagement with the same event within the same short time window is unusual. It may reflect nothing more than a genuinely compelling story reaching people with shared interests at the same time. It may just be that all are friends of Hugoboom. It may also reflect something more deliberate. Either way, the pattern is worth examining.
One place worth looking is the money behind Evie.
Thiel Capital led a $3.2 million seed round in 28, the wellness app created by Evie’s founders. The app was originally branded as “28 by Evie,” and the URL 28byevie.com still redirects to 28.co. Brittany Hugoboom has maintained to reporters, including at Rolling Stone, that Thiel has no investment in or involvement with Evie Magazine itself and only in the app. This distinction may be meaningful but it may also be largely formal, given that the app and the magazine share founders, audiences, editorial sensibilities, purpose, etc.
Whether or not Thiel’s involvement extends beyond this app investment, his presence in the ecosystem raises a question about what kind of infrastructure Evie has access to. A simultaneous WSJ front page and Vanity Fair profile. The influencer campaign. The launch event during New York Fashion Week. Someone has the resources to execute this plan. Thiel is one of a very small number of figures on the American right who possesses all of them simultaneously.
The right talks about institution-building constantly. It has become perhaps the single most common aspiration expressed by conservative intellectuals, media figures, and poasters. “Build the institutions.” The sentiment is so widespread it has become almost meaningless through repetition.
What most people mean by “institution-building” is starting a podcast, launching a Substack, or organizing a conference. Almost no one on the right is building institutions in a serious fashion with serious capital, serious execution, and serious media strategy, but Evie might be doing it.
A call to “build our own Politico, Axios” is correct precisely because it identifies the next logical step major players are already pursuing. The downstream cultural projects like lifestyle media, wellness, community events prepare an audience. The next move is a political media operation built on the same infrastructure with professional execution and serious capital.
Someone is doing what everyone on the right says should be done, and doing it better than almost anyone else. The question is not whether this is good or bad, but if this is being done by institutional interests, what does this mean for everyone who is not inside the network?
With a small number of funders choosing the projects that are validated by our prestige gatekeepers and deciding what “conservative institution-building” looks like in practice, the field is being defined before most people realize it.