“I’ve been to a billion weddings recently. There’s a big demand for tea dresses in my life!” At 33, Alexa Chung has reached “that age,” which is partly why she’s ended up selecting a church and booking a children’s choir for the unveiling of her first eponymous label collection. “Really, they’re wearable tomboyish clothes I could see my friends in,” she extemporizes at the casting for the presentation, which is taking to the aisle of the Danish church in North London tonight. “And then”—she flicks a white eyelet maxi dress with a caped shoulder line off the rack and holds it up—“this will probably come up at the end.”
Said frock is immediately available for stylish shotgun weddings via a see-now-buy-now international launch of the Alexa Chung range—and at only 445 pounds ($572).
This is no straight-up bridal affair she’s planning, though. The launch collection, she says, “is more about West London good girls corrupted. What would happen if fresh-faced girls, good at netball, were infiltrated by an electronic band from Germany? I mean the sort of band that’s getting a reaction on Pitchfork, but hasn’t been well reviewed in The Guardian. You know?”
As a media-savvy It girl of many years standing, Chung is fluent in the kind of quick-fire fashion language that flies around whenever two or three British fashion people are gathered together backstage, on sets, or in studios. “I started modeling at 15. And this is quite weird: Yesterday there was a girl who came up on the train from Winchester, from the same school I went to,” she says, as a dark-haired teen with a bed-headed bob strides through her casting paces wearing a pair of high-waisted jeans and a tucked-in shirt, with a sweater tied around her neck, and a pair of silver loafers on her feet. An au naturel Alexa-alike, to the life, obviously.
The Alexa thing has always been to point out a bit of a classic, put it on, and make every girl imagine that she can be like her—a magic she first waved over in an old Barbour jacket she wore to Glastonbury. Her graduation to her own brand after a near 10-year carousel of gigs as a collaborator (Madewell, Mulberry, Marks & Spencer, Lancôme) has come about with backing from Peter Dubens through Pembroke VCT; Dubens is also invested in Bella Freud’s business. Chung is buckling down full-time to the responsibility, she says, with a studio of professional designers in London, soon to be based in the De Beauvoir East End fashion hub. They’re already working on their fifth drop. Had she taken some technical lessons to gear up to this? “Do a Kanye?” she hoots. “Absolutely not! I like playing dress-up. I can do a rudimentary sketch. I like thinking about styling or discovering something surprising. It’s really about how something makes me feel, more the emotional side.”
This season is inspired by familiar ’60s and ’70s rock ’n’ roll characterizations: Marianne Faithfull’s black leather minidress; Brian Jones’s pink-and-black striped flared suit; David Bowie’s ice-blue tailored jacket and pants. More to the point, though, she says, is getting the proportions just right for now, and continuing with a good fit, which will keep girls coming back. And she’s soon shrugged on a navy double-breasted blazer, priced at 600 pounds ($771). “This one’s the dream,” she declares, buttoning it up and delightedly showing the back view. “I think from now on, I’m quite interested in concentrating on the boring bits!”