Ms. Chung, there doesn’t seem to be single interview or article about you that doesn’t mention your outfit that day or describe what you’re wearing. Is it tiring for you to always have to look cool?
I think I’ve just disassociated from that, to be honest! (Laughs) I think those things only exist in interactions with journalists. In my day-to-day life, no one is taking pictures of me or talking about my outfits. My daily reality almost has nothing to do with this other thing I interact with and make money from. It’s quite weird because sometimes I’m actually like, “Do I look okay?” Because no one ever says anything about what I’ve got on! But I am attuned to how people are perceiving me and sometimes I’m paranoid about it. I never want to admit that I’m slightly famous, but worrying that people are looking at me does have credence, and I don’t really acknowledge it as much as I should.
Do you think those expectations and perceptions have died down a bit as you’ve gotten older?
I think they have, yeah. But fashion is cyclical. Now we’re in an era of talking about the past, but in a more comfortable way! I’m pleased to be a bit older and look back at that time and myself and be like, “Oh yeah, it really did have its own aesthetic, and I was a part of that.”
“If it all feels completely authentic to you, it’s great style.”
You once described your aesthetic as simply a signpost to the culture that you know and love. What does that mean exactly?
I think good style is the apex of your interests and your cultural diet, meeting the understanding of your own physicality and proportions, plus adding in what’s available. It’s that cocktail. And in the end, if it all feels completely authentic to you, it’s great style. When I was younger, I was sort of avoiding the male gaze because I’d been modeling and wasn’t really interested at all in satisfying the lens, essentially. Eventually I discovered what I found to be alluring, which was definitely women from the 1960s who I felt had this kind of easy way of interacting with their own sexuality. But in the public domain, everyone was wearing Hervé Leger dresses, way too much makeup, platform heels; to my eye everyone looked like they were in a trap. But I love this more relaxed way of dressing. Beck still looks good, I loved all the riot girl bands, Brit pop, Justine Frischmann, Sleeper, I loved the hair of Shirley Manson or PJ Harvey. I was very musician led because that’s what I was into.
I think social media has also made it a bit more unauthentic because these days now you have TikToks telling you how to dress in a certain style.
Yeah, I find it so weird! I think it’s so strange the way it gets boiled down to: an algorithm that you can apply to get good style. When I was growing up, like I said I was very musician led, but we didn’t have social media or this rolodex of imagery, so inspiration came from magazines or books or what you saw on MTV. I could try and conjure up what I thought the boots that PJ Harvey had on, but I’d only seen them in a video once, so you’d only sort of get it right. It was those mistakes that what were interesting.
It feels like your approach to fashion seems to come from: “Here is what I love,” rather than “I know everything.”
Oh yeah, I know nothing. I just like clothes! For me it’s about the enjoyment and the joy of how I think putting an outfit on can help you be perceived in different ways. It’s a power tool for how to move through life, shifting people’s expectations of you, under selling it or sometimes overplaying it. I just find it all interesting, and fundamentally, I just love beautiful things and practical things and things that alter how I feel about myself and how other people might feel about me. It’s an interesting way to move through life.
How does that translate when you’re designing clothes?
I’ve got another collaboration coming out with Madewell, and it takes inspiration from vintage and also my own wardrobe, because increasingly, I’ve realized that the closer it is to my own style, the more natural and true it is. And the more I lean into specificity, the more resonant it becomes with other people. I think last time I worked with Madewell, we made a suede blazer just because I really wanted this thing and that ended up doing quite well. So I really wanted it to be a true reflection of how I would interpret seasonal and holiday dressing. But I was also thinking about the relationship between CBGB and Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood and that kind of early punk scene seventies, as well as my view on Americana. It runs the gauntlet from nailing my dream out to wear, making sure that we’ve got the denim right.
Is there a difficult dynamic for you in terms of making things that you want to wear, because then everyone will be dressing like you? But if you don’t, it’s not true to yourself.
Yeah, definitely. It’s something I have thought about a lot in the past. And I think when I had my own fashion brand, that sort of tripped me up quite a lot, because I don’t like being boxed in. What made me unique in my early days was that I refused to look like everyone else. But I think what’s important at this point for me is, if I like something, not to second guess myself. If I like it, I like it. When I think about Lauren Hutton, I think of her with a Bottega bag and a raincoat on. And when I think about the late great Diane Keaton, I imagine her in a Ralph Lauren suit. I think that it’s okay to have a style which is easily organized into a particular visual. Plus, people buy things from a disparate number of sources. So they’re not necessarily going to be head to toe in the AC Madewell look anyway.
It seems like your work is guided so much by instinct. Is that also how you choose your creative projects? Just following what you love?
Yeah, I don’t say yes to things that I don’t feel will be nourishing or educational to me, which is a really fortunate place to be in. I think for a while I was recovering from the trauma of closing my own business, my brand Alexa Chung. I literally was like, “I can’t ever, ever design clothing again or work like this again.” But now slowly, I derive pleasure from that interaction.
“Only you can hold yourself accountable, so don’t put the responsibility of a big dream in someone else’s hands.”
You mentioned the trauma of closing your brand… Is that still present for you?
To be honest, I used to feel shame of having closed it down because I hadn’t succeeded. But now I realized it was amazing that we managed to pay our debtors; a lot of people in business, if it’s not going well, they go bankrupt, because that’s also convenient for investors. But we had a moral standing, and I’m so amazed that I was surrounded by people that helped me do a controlled wind down. I learned so much because I had to take control of it myself. But at that time, I didn’t listen to my instincts, essentially, and I presumed other people knew more than me, and actually, nobody knows more about you than you. You have to go in with this mindset of: I’m going to make mistakes, but I will have no regrets, because it will always be on my terms, whatever your job might be. It’s fruitful to know that only you can hold yourself accountable, so don’t put the responsibility of a big dream in someone else’s hands.
Was it hard to grapple with that realization?
I think you have to be open to failure. As a society, we’re now far too judgy, and we just don’t let people make mistakes. And I’m not saying like we should not hold people accountable when they’ve been monsters, that’s separate. But in the creative field, not everything can be a 12 out of 10. Sometimes people hand in shit because they were dealing with a personal problem, or they didn’t get the right team that they needed, or whatever else. And I think we should have a bit more grace for that.
It sounds like you’re really in your prime in terms of personal creativity, expression, and acceptance.
I mean, not to toot my own horn but I do think I look better now than I’ve ever looked — not necessarily style wise, but I’m going to the gym and not drinking loads of whiskey. And I think it’s going to get better: you know, falling in love, raising a stepdaughter, and those things are invigorating too, because it means that any project I say yes to now has to have kind of resonance.