The mother hoping to forge a global multi-million pound empire by championing women who refuse sex before marriage, stay at home and have babies – and buy her £142 milkmaid dresses

Brittany Hugoboom, editor and co-founder of the glossy magazine Evie, arrives with a big smile on her face – and it’s hard to interpret it as anything other than a smile of defiance.

Evie – and Hugoboom – are controversial even in Donald Trump‘s US for their anti-feminist positions. Swipe past the professional fashion shoots and the celebrity gossip, and this is a magazine that advocates no sex before marriage, takes a stand against the Pill, and says feminism is making women depressed.

Variously dubbed the Conservative Cosmo and the Tradwife’s Bible, the online magazine has 100 million views per month, including a growing audience in the UK – according to Hugoboom – but is accused by critics of fundamentally undermining women’s rights.

Hugoboom says she and Evie represent ‘a resurgence of values and aspirations’ that a huge section of the female population has been missing after decades of ‘harmful’ women’s media.

To be fair, in the flesh, the glamorous 33-year-old former model and mother of two is nothing like my mental image of a ‘tradwife’ and certainly isn’t dressed as some throwback 1950s hausfrau.

Today, she’s wearing a mini dress by the Indian designer Hemant & Nandita, with glimpses of glittery, sequinned Victoria’s Secret bra straps at her shoulders. She’s also sporting thick black Wolford tights and Doc Martens boots and there’s a chunky diamond ring on her finger.

Moreover, we’re talking at a studio in buzzy and urban Brooklyn, New York, not a windswept prairie in Utah or Ohio. Still, the philosophy feels very ‘surrendered’ to me.

‘I think women want a softer life, a beautiful life, rather than feeling all this pressure to do things like a man,’ Hugoboom tells me.

Women, she says, want to ‘reclaim their femininity’. Yes, they can work – but lots of us have ‘girlboss’ burnout. Single women are fed up with casual sex and being shamed for wanting to meet The One, get married, stay at home and have babies. ‘Natural’ birth control is better than the Pill.

Critics say it’s an old narrative that threatens to reduce women and make their lives smaller. Furthermore, detractors say it’s an example of how misinformation and hard-Right ideas can be made more appealing if they are hidden among make-up tips, sex life advice – albeit for ‘married women only’ – and surprisingly sexy fashion shoots for a magazine that thinks women should be virgins on their wedding night.

Indeed, some commentators on social media have gone further, claiming Evie and its editor are positively ‘dangerous’. Hugoboom laughs when I put this to her. ‘I’m not dangerous. It’s bizarre, because there are so many other magazines for women out there and nobody ever calls them out for their Left-wing slant.

‘We want to empower women and give them media that reflects their values rather than confusing and shaming them. And 95 per cent of our content isn’t political.’

Certainly, there are articles that might run in any other women’s magazine. And then there are headlines like ‘Want your husband to get you pregnant? Cook him these ten dishes’.

And: ‘Three surprisingly common ways women disrespect their husbands (without meaning to)’.

There’s an article by a (male) sociology professor that claims ‘women’s independence and gender equality is a factor in the long-term decline in marriage’. Hillary Clinton is referred to as the ‘twice-failed’ presidential candidate (the website endorsed President Trump for his second term).

Evie has also run criticisms of no-fault divorce and the IVF industry (largely on the grounds that IVF encourages women to leave having children till later).

Hugoboom founded the magazine in 2019 with her husband Gabriel, 33, who has accompanied his wife to our meeting but has so far remained in the background. The couple have two daughters, aged one and three.

But it’s not just a mag, it turns out – Evie is an entire concept. An empire of hyper-femininity, if you like. There’s the release of the Raw Milkmaid Dress, for example, which is modelled by Hugoboom and features a corseted body, cinched waist and leg slit (Hugoboom, we’re told, has a 32G bust). Described as ‘100 per cent feminine energy’, the dress originally came in five colours, cost $189 (£142) and was advertised with the phrase: ‘Warning: Wearing this dress may get you arrested for being too hot.’

‘It sold out within the week, except for size small in white,’ shrugs Hugoboom.

There’s also a female wellness app called 28, which encourages women to track their menstrual cycle instead of taking the Pill or using other birth control methods. The couple have their own femtech company, which is backed to the tune of £1.5m by Trump-supporting tech titan Peter Thiel.

‘A lot of young women are getting off the Pill because of side-effects,’ says Hugoboom. ‘It’s the first time in history where perfectly healthy women are taking a pill every single day – my doctor tried to prescribe it to me for acne.

‘Women are being prescribed it for all sorts of reasons and having horrible side-effects. Every person reacts differently, and I think if some women have issues with it, they shouldn’t be told that it’s all in their heads – they should be taken seriously.’

It’s ironic, of course, that Hugoboom runs two businesses, because another theme in her magazine is that women feel too much pressure to keep up with men in the workplace.

‘Girl-boss feminism? I think women are over it,’ she says. ‘It’s in our nature to have more of a work-life balance than men. I think men sometimes make themselves sick trying to succeed and become CEOs, and I don’t think women have the same drive.

‘Why are we putting women in a box where they have to wear a pantsuit and go to an office and act like a man? Why can’t women want love and romance and find joy in babies and all the little things?’

Evie has a staff of ten and Hugoboom is in charge of the editorial side, while her husband does the business and operations side. They work together on an annual print copy.

As the couple has recently moved from Miami to New York, they usually order food or eat out, but she likes to cook when she has the chance.

Are household tasks evenly divided between husband and wife, I wonder? ‘He takes out the garbage and stuff like that, and I suppose I do the rest,’ she says.

It’s one of the few occasions when she sounds like every other thirtysomething woman. Almost everything else she says has an edge of controversy.

Thanks to weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro, for example, the body positive movement, which encouraged women to accept themselves no matter their size or shape, has now run its course, Hugoboom thinks.

‘It proves that the body positivity movement was a coping mechanism because the second they [the drugs] came out, people rushed to get them.’

One of Evie’s cover models is Hannah Neeleman, the former Julliard-trained ballet dancer who spearheaded the tradwife phenomenon. She and her husband Daniel, the son of the founder of the JetBlue airline, live with their large brood of children on a 328-acre farm in Utah and have 10 million followers online. Famously Neeleman won the Mrs America title 12 days after giving birth to her youngest – and eighth – child.

Is she the ultimate Evie woman? ‘I think she could be,’ says Hugoboom, animatedly. ‘I think she’s incredible and beautiful and extremely inspiring. I couldn’t do what she does, but I respect her.

‘I started following her after she’d had her eighth baby and did the beauty pageant. I’d just had my second baby, and I certainly could not have competed in a beauty pageant. She reminds me of a Jane Austen heroine… she’s obviously a very strong and joyful woman.’

Hugoboom says she is not a ‘tradwife’ and points out that she and her husband established their magazine before the term emerged.

‘I think being a tradwife is more of a privilege. If you live somewhere in middle America the family might be able to live off the husband’s salary but in New York or LA, unless your husband was extremely rich, you couldn’t.’

Of course, the same applies in the UK – even if a woman wanted to adhere to strictly traditional gender roles, realistically most households require two incomes to pay the bills.

Of all the subjects we talk about, Hugoboom is most animated when we talk about marriage. She and her husband met at college, when they were both 18. Both came from Catholic families – she is one of four children, and he is one of eight. They got engaged in front of the Vatican in Rome.

There’s plenty of advice about sex in Evie, but it is all in the context of marriage. Headlines include: ‘I’m a virgin, how do I make my wedding night go smoothly?’ and ‘The art of oral sex: a wife’s guide’.

Was Hugoboom a virgin when she met her husband-to-be? ‘I was,’ she says, looking rather startled by the question.

She thinks few people nowadays have a positive view of marriage. In 2023 she posted on X about her sixth wedding anniversary, describing being whisked away by her husband to a luxury hotel and a bed strewn with rose petals, and being presented with jewellery and Agent Provocateur lingerie.

‘It went viral in a bad way, and it was mostly men saying the whole thing was unrealistic. I’m tired of seeing marriage and motherhood being promoted as a ball-and-chain situation where the wife is naggy and wears an ugly sweatshirt because the baby’s puked on her.

‘I believe in committed love and always working to improve your marriage and not letting it go stale, and Evie readers believe that, too.’

Her husband, she continues, is ‘the greatest man on the planet’. ‘He’s a romantic, and the most courageous person I’ve ever met. He doesn’t care what people think of him. He’s fearless. He’s an excellent hunter [of white-tailed deer]. I could go on and on about him.’

Like George Clooney and his wife Amal, they rarely row, she says. ‘We’re very ying and yang. Neither of us is highly emotional. He’s more extroverted while I’m more introverted.’

And besides, her husband has no faults at all, except perhaps the fact ‘he hates germs and he hates rats, so he won’t take the subway’.

‘How does she keep the spark alive?’, I force myself to ask. ‘I like to dress sexy around the house,’ she replies, adding that she will wear a dress with a bit of cleavage. Every couple wants love and romance, I suggest, but surely that’s often lost in the day-to-day grind? ‘Yes, but you can choose every day to be grateful for the little things. I’m annoyingly optimistic.’

Gabriel sounds like a paragon of virtue, so we call him over. Tall and bearded, he’s friendly but clearly intensely focused on the couple’s mission and does not seem bothered that it is attracting so much disapproval from the mainstream female universe.

‘We’re looking at building a feminine media empire – a podcast division, getting into fiction and non-fiction, and we’re in talks with some studios and production companies about scripted and unscripted shows,’ he says.

‘I think Evie has a unique voice to serve a demographic that hasn’t been served in America for decades and we’re very excited about the future.’

What does he think about the criticism levelled at him and his wife and Evie? ‘Criticism? What criticism?’ he jokes. ‘I think there’s a lot of people who had an agenda [against us] right from the very beginning.’

Menstrual cycle apps, milkmaid dresses, podcasts… I wonder if Hugoboom sees herself as the next Gwyneth Paltrow. ‘Selling those candles? she interjects, referring to the famous Goop candle called This Smells Like My Vagina.

‘I love Gwyneth Paltrow. I love Goop. She’s beautiful and fascinating and does things that no one else has done. I have a lot of respect for her but, no, I don’t imagine us selling candles like that.’

Another woman she admires is First Lady Melania Trump. In March, the whole family was invited to the White House for Women’s History Month. ‘I think Melania is beautiful,’ she says. ‘I’d love to have her on the cover of Evie…

‘I’m writing a book right now,’ she reveals. ‘It will be about women being able to rediscover their femininity and use it for whatever end is best for them.’

She will also continue building her empire with her husband, and adding to her family of two girls. ‘I’d like two boys but I’m going to wait a year or so,’ she says.

Hugoboom claims Evie is spearheading a major cultural shift and says she takes the responsibility seriously. Plenty of people would take issue with that analysis, of course – yet the backlash against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and, by extension, feminism – in the US at least – is undeniable.

Does she feel she’s harshly judged? ‘Yes, but so are the Kardashians and so is Hannah Ballerina Farm [Hannah Neeleman] and everyone in the spotlight. I think beauty and charm are some of the most powerful tools women can utilise and they’re fed up with this ugliness agenda.

‘They’re being told that femininity is a weakness and it’s not. My critics don’t keep me awake at night. Only my babies do.’