“I grew up in a miniature village in the middle of the countryside in England, quite secluded from the outside world. I was always enamored by the fashion industry. I’d read Vogue magazines at the hairdresser’s while I was waiting for my mom to get her hair done and used to write essays on the fashion world with my friend Lucinda who lived up the road. This was before blogs or Internet or stuff like that. Even now, I consider myself mostly a journalist because I write interviews for a living. I did TV for a bit, and somewhere along the line I started writing a column for The Independent newspaper in England, and now I write features for British Vogue. It’s a bit braggy to say, but I’m over here (in New York) writing cover stories on couture, but literally no one knows that I do it!”
Alexa Chung-IT coverReading the reviews though, you can see there is a love-hate relationship when it comes to her book.
Let me start with John Crace, British journalist and sketch writer for The Guardian, and quote: “I loved everything about the Spice Girls. Their clothes, their music, their manufactured artificiality. But I especially loved the fact they showed women could become celebrities without having any talent. Here’s a couple of photos of me completely naked”.
“My favorite book is Lolita because I just adore the pubescent teenage girl look. It rocks. I also like the Edie Sedgwick look. How many drugs can one girl take? Never enough, because taking drugs looks really, really cool. Kate Moss is the hippest woman alive. Fact. Here’s a photo of my best friend, Misty” – He is referring to the lines from the book, and how silly they seem to be.
And then there is Barbara Ellen, columnist for The Observer magazine who’s review on the book had the most influence on people:
“Ultimately, ‘It’ comes across like some stoned fashion student’s end-of-term mood board…
interspersed with frissons of abstract Stateside cool, with Chung affecting to exist in little urban “moments”, of isolated bliss, pain and wisdom, in the style of, say, Miranda July or Greta Gerwig.
It’s a shame because every so often the real (more engaging) Chung leaks out. She also writes with brio about preferring granny pants to G-strings, and flat shoes to heels: “Limping home to find the plasters when I could be out dancing all night sounds like a shitty way to end the evening.” …It could have done with more of this – more of the real Alexa.
As it is, you find yourself thinking – what is this? A pop-art take on a memoir, a ‘fashionista’ coffee-table book, or just a bit of fun – a brazen cash-in by an enterprising young style icon? Well perhaps all of the above – and why not, if there are enough Chung fans out there willing to buy it? However, for what It could have revealed to us (but didn’t), both about Chung personally and about how it feels to be on the receiving end of a poisonous ‘thinsult’ subculture, this book mainly emerges as a wasted opportunity.”
For every bad review however, there is a good one. If you read trough some of the comments online, you will notice that a lot of young girls are in love with Alexa’s honesty and fun personality throughout the book.
I think that her sarcastic attitude towards the fashion industry, and the “laid back kind of girl with edge” look she goes for, shows how she doesn’t take her status in the industry seriously and maybe she should concentrate a bit more on ‘IT’- Whatever ‘IT’ means.
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