When your style is inimitable as Alexa Chung’s the line between designer and muse is blurred. For her, this was never clearer than when creating her new collection of sunglasses.
‘I just thought about what looked cool, not how to be democratic about it, which I think is the same thing I did when I first designed clothes’ Alexa Chung tells me as she sips on a whiskey watered down with a dribble of Coke (red can, naturally) at the launch of her new collaboration with Sunglass Hut.
At the midway point of fashion month with her eponymous label’s show only just behind her, Alexa’s mind is whirling. How she decides on her upcoming outfits is a small insight into the constant cog-turning that’s happening behind the scenes. ‘My process isn’t that democratic, practical or relatable. I go on Vogue Runway and look at the designers that I love and then I create a list in my heads of those looks and match them up to the events that I’m going to. For example, on Monday I have a Net-A-Porter dinner so it will need to be a British designer and stocked on NET. I’ll also need to consider how I will be feeling by 8pm after a day of shows. Like, will I mind if I’m cold?’ She explains. ‘Then there is the Emilia Wickstead show on Monday but I can’t wear Emilia to Emilia because I’m wearing Christopher to the Christopher Kane show earlier in the day, so it’s a logistical game in my head.'
Before you ask, no, she doesn’t let anyone help her pick her outfits. She has George Northwood do her hair but the ensembles are all her. Why? ‘I’m very contrary’, she admits, ‘my style may look predictable, but I like to surprise, so you don’t see it coming’.
She’s understandably very tired and feeling quite blessed to have a new pair of black specs to hide behind. Hers are (obviously) from this new collection, her first ever sunglass range. Though five designs were initially flouted she says they cut it down to two final styles – wide-resin brimmed specs with dark lenses in a tortoiseshell, black and Kurt Cobain white that chime in at £149.
Alexa was quite clear what she wanted from these sunnies. Firstly, they needed to be fairly priced – ‘a treat, not a guilt item’, she says – because as she wryly puts it, ‘let’s face facts, you often sit on sunglasses and I personally loathe to spend copious amounts of money on something I will inevitably lose or break.’
In terms of design, Alexa was very exact on how they should look. Leaning forward on a high stool she pinpoints her precise inspiration as a cross between Scott Walker (before he was in the Walker Brothers), Marcello Mastroianni’s sunglasses in Fellini’s 8½ and the 3D specs one borrows at the IMAX. There were a few famous women thrown onto the moodboard too – ‘Anna Karina, Jackie O, Charlotte Rampling’.
I ask Alexa if she’s played the 10-year-challenge – you know,the game of comparing a recent selfie to one from 2009. Yes, she has. ‘I look a lot more wrinkly but pretty much the same. When everyone started doing the 10-year-challenge I thought, honestly I stand by all of my outfits, I would wear them right now.’
Needless to say, we expect Alexa will still be wearing those IMAX-inspired specs in 2029.