To preview her collaboration with AG Jeans to the press on Monday night, Alexa Chung did away with the idea of parading models to show off the designs. Instead, she modelled the designs herself. Like the cool girl at school, she managed to showcase more than 10 outfits, changing in front of everyone without revealing her pants once. We were most impressed. The 21-piece collection, due in January with images embargoed until then, wasn’t half bad either.
The collection is inspired by real girls
But, when you’re Chung, they’re often famous, too. See the Pixie dress, a button-through shirt number named after Pixie Geldof. Or the Tennessee, a pair of overalls named in honour of her BFF, Tennessee Thomas. Chung conceded that her friends might not wear their namesake pieces. “Pixie would definitely ask where the pink fluffy stuff was,” said Chung.
Johnny Borrell’s influence is back
Chung wiggled into a pair of white jeans – “they’re a bit small because I’ve been in England eating roast dinners,” she said – and namechecked the Razorlight frontman as a bit of an inspiration. “Do you remember when he wore white jeans for three years straight?” she asked, in that deadpan way of hers. “I thought we should bring that back.” George Harrison’s jeans were also on the moodboard – and inspired a pair of high-waisted skinny numbers.
This is a denim brand, but it’s not just jeans
Our favourite piece was a ribbed T-shirt that came in grey marl and cream, that Chung said was “good to layer under stuff” (she wore hers under a sweet short pinafore dress). There were also an array of Chung-like ingenue dresses – one with a flouncy frill across the shoulders, and another with high-necked design. “I love a smock dress,” said Chung “even though I am over five. I thought I could do something that was more like a vicar than Peter Pan because I’m bored of wearing them.”
Chung can design stuff beyond what she’d like to wear
A pair of knee-length shorts were spurned during the try-on process because “they look weird for me, better on a blonde”, and even the cut-off hotpants – a staple of Chung’s festival wardrobe “combined with a Barbour and a wellington boot” – were borderline. “I think I might have to give up hotpants because I’m 31 in a week,” she said, pulling on them on. We have to say if we looked like that in a pair of hotpants, we’d never stop wearing them.
She’s well aware a girl can do too many collaborations
Chung said she was hesitant to sign on with AG because “maybe I was whoring myself out in collaboration land” but she changed her mind after visiting the LA factory. A family business with, said Chung, “with loads of people working like elves on Christmas eve”, she described it as magical. The fact that she got to design her own buttons sealed the deal.
