Let's Talk About It

Multi-hyphenate and face of Longchamp Alexa Chung is undeniably one of the millennium’s original It girls, but what happens when she grows up? Imran Jalal reports.

To voice her anti-Brexit stance the week UK voters went to poll in June, Alexa Chung took to Instagram (@chungalexa), posting a photo of herself in a tee with the slogan “Give A Damn”. The caption: “If you live in the UK, I hope you remember to give a damn tomorrow and vote! :-) xx”. That’s how Chung rolls – with a charming mix of candour, goofiness, irreverence and swag.

In town recently for the opening of Longchamp’s boutique at The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands, the face of the French leather goods house lives up to the It girl status she’s been crowned with since the mid-2000s. Effortlessly cool attitude aside, she remains a fashion plate – striking in a simple suede shift dress and patent leather flats from Longchamp’s F/W ’16 collection; her long bob in signature out-of-bed mode during our interview.

While the media has moved on to a new gen of It girls, from social media influencers to bombshell celebrity scions like the Kardashians and Hadids (her 2.3 million Instagram followers is a fraction of theirs), she still wields as much – if not more – sartorial power.

Cue the hundreds of blogs and Tumblr accounts devoted to her OOTDs. Trends such as parkas, ballerina flats and maillots have all been attributed to her, simply because she was photographed in them.

That cred might have something to do with Longchamp selecting her as its poster girl for five seasons now. Chung herself boils it down to her “Britishness”, but is hard-pressed to distil what that means exactly. “Hilarious. I don’t know (what that means) – playful, silly, fun, stylish, cool, hip? You can’t really talk about yourself like this,” she says.