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"SCENE 1: BACKSTAGE\n\nThe greenroom of Alexa Chung's new show, 24 Hour Catwalk (a younger, hipper version of Project Runway, brought to you by the same network, Lifetime), NYC. Alexa acts as host, aided by a panel of fashion-industry judges: designer Cynthia Rowley, PR maven James LaForce, and social scribe Derek Blasberg.\n\nAlexa is leaning forward on a couch, trying to explain to me and her fellow judges the meaning of the word glamping. \"Glamorous camping\u2014going to Glastonbury Festival and staying in a Winnebago,\" she says breezily, her British accent lending an air of authority. The judges are not convinced, so she suggests a visual check. \"Google-image 'glamping,' and if a picture of me in a Fendi jumper and f***ing Hunter Wellies doesn't come up, I'm a dead man.\" Derek takes her to task, but the only pictures that result are of actual campsites.\n\n\"I'm going to write a book called Alexicon that will explain everything,\" Alexa says, with a mix of sarcasm and exasperation. The 27-year-old's speech is littered with catchphrases she has seemingly plucked from thin air. For the record, \"glamping,\" or at least her definition of it, refers to a way of dressing at music festivals made famous by Alexa and the English fashion icon who came before her, Kate Moss. It employs a subversive high-low, dressy-casual mix (think sequined minidress and Wellies or short shorts and Wellies\u2014the boots are a constant). \"People always ask me, 'What are you going to wear to Glastonbury this year?'\" Alexa says, \"and I'm like, 'The same outfit.' The outfit,\" she adds, with an implied duh: \"Breton shirt, shorts, leather jacket, Wellies, a hat. It's my favorite outfit ever. I grew up in the country, so I know exactly what to wear.\"\n\nTruth be told, Alexa knows exactly what to wear everywhere. For fashion parties: girlish minidresses with flats and undone hair. For red-carpet galas: a tudo and a red lip (gown is not a word in the Alexicon). For walking down the street: skinny cords, a silk button-down, and a cross-body Chanel bag. Her effortlessly cool and just-unexpected- enough way of putting clothes together has made her a muse to designers and peers alike. She's a fashion Pied Piper to a generation of teens and 20-somethings who imitate her every outfit change. (It doesn't hurt that she's a former model and looks good in anything she puts on.) Today, Alexa is wearing a dove-gray Empire-waist minidress (vintage, picked up at the Chelsea flea market) with cartoonishly high Vivienne Westwood platforms (the ones Naomi Campbell famously took a tumble in on the runway\u2014\"They had a picture of her falling in the look book,\" says Alexa. \"I was like, Done!\").\n\nThe thing is, Alexa's style is so feverishly watched that until now, her other talents have been somewhat overlooked. \"It girl problems,\" she jokes of her precarious situation. So what does she, in fact, do other than go glamping? The answer: quite a lot. She made a name for herself in her native England as host of the popular music show Popworld. (Her initial attempt at translating that to an American audience with the daily MTV show It's On with Alexa Chung was not as successful. The program was canceled in December 2009, less than a year into its run.) She pens features for British Vogue. She DJs. And she designs a capsule collection of clothing and accessories for Madewell. The first one debuted last fall and instantly blew out of stores. (\"I almost wanna go high-five them,\" Alexa says of seeing girls on the street wearing her designs.) The second collection, which has a 1970s California vibe, is available now (run, don't walk). With 24 HC, though, Alexa has the potential to catapult herself from fashion insider to mega fashion personality.\n\nSCENE 2: SHOWTIME!\n\n\"Hello!\" says Alexa, emerging from backstage before an audience of about 100 20-somethings assembled for the taping of this episode. The crowd, perhaps unsure what to make of this beautiful creature with preternaturally long, skinny legs, remains silent. \"Why is everyone so moody today?\" Alexa teases, breaking the ice. \"I know it's fashion, but you can be happy.\" Laughter erupts.\n\nAlexa is in week two of filming for 24 HC. She reports to work at 5:00 a.m. and often doesn't leave before 11:00 p.m. She spends more time here than she does at her own home, which she moved into days before filming started and has yet to furnish. (\"I sleep on a mattress on the floor,\" she says. \"There's nothing more grounding than that.\")\n\n24 HC is filmed over the course of 24 hours (hence the name of the show). Four designers competing for a $10,000 grand prize are narrowed down to two, who then have a day to complete three looks. There's a runway show, judges' deliberations, and the selection of a winner. Every episode brings a new crop of designer hopefuls. \"With a lot of other fashion shows, it's not actually relevant,\" Alexa says. \"I only wanted to do this if it was going to be a genuine search for designers and if I would be working alongside people who are legitimate in the fashion industry.\" She says she's set her expectations low because \"I got so burnt by the last [show].\" But she adds: \"Everything feels right this time. I really like the team. From day one, we've laughed nonstop.\"\n\nIt helps that she's already gotten her feet wet in American television. \"I feel like I've done my hellos. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, I can still draw or write or do whatever,\" she says. \"Last time [with MTV], I gave up my London home and friends and jobs there, so it was more disappointing when it didn't work. But I feel more rooted here now. I'm like, OK, I've done this before. I can speak American now.\"\n\nSCENE 3: WARDROBE\n\nOne place Alexa is definitely on solid footing is in the wardrobe department. \"I've been trying to wear quite big outfits,\" she says of her fashion direction for the show. \"I don't want to look naff [Britspeak for 'common']. I think it should be a true reflection of what's going on in fashion.\" She's been borrowing runway numbers from the likes of Chanel, Burberry, and Proenza Schouler (not your typical reality-show fashion fare). As in real life, Alexa is acting as her own stylist. \"Basically, I was given a budget, and I spent it all on one Balenciaga leather jacket,\" she says, laughing. \"So I've got ten episodes to do and nothing to wear.\" When I point out the irony of her comment, she quips, \"My closet at home is barren.\"\n\nSCENE 4: ALEXA'S CLOSET\n\nIn fact, by Alexa's own admission, her apartment is so overstuffed with clothes, \"it looks like Hoarders. Back in London, I had what I called a 'terror room.' It was floor-to- floor with shipped bos from the U.S.A., still unpacked one year on, with clothes spilling out of them\u2014basically, a mattress of clothes up to here,\" she says, holding her hand waist high. \"People ask how I get dressed in the morning. I literally pick through the swamp. I'm worried if it's neatly arranged, I won't be able to get dressed.\"\n\nHer closet staples include the following: Burberry trench (\"it's classic and practical, and Fran\u00E7oise Hardy wore one in a picture where she's holding a camera and has white glasses on\"); striped Breton tops (\"they're a last-resort situation if I'm tired and don't know what to wear\u2014stripes always look crisp\"); little white dresses (she pairs them with boots to toughen them up); and anything schoolgirl (\"I love schoolgirl style; it's relad but smart, boyish but girly\u2014all my favorite juxtapositions in one\"). She says she gravitates toward classics because they're easy to adapt, especially when she's traveling.\n\nAlexa describes her style as \"understated. I don't like things to be too overthought or too sexy or too vampy,\" she says. Her style icons tend to be men: Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, the Beatles. \"I like the silhouette of a cigarette pant with a Chelsea boot and a buttoned-up shirt,\" she offers. \"But there's also a side of me that loves superfeminine dressing\u2014looking like a cake or a Christmas tree,\" she says, laughing. Marie-Antoinette is also a style icon.\n\nDo the paparazzi who wait outside her building on a regular basis cross her mind when she gets dressed in the morning? \"It depends. Sometimes there are bigger life things going on,\" she says. \"The annoying thing is that whenever I do spot a pap, I'm like, Ugh! Today wasn't a good day. Why didn't you get me yesterday?\"\n\nShe's come to accept and even appreciate the It girl label because, she says, \"when I look at It girls of other decades\u2014Jane Birkin, Penelope Tree, Jean Shrimpton\u2014those are all the people whose style I admire. If it's meant in that way, I think it's cool.\"\n\nShe adores Elle Fanning's style but is less impressed with the sisters Middleton. \"I massively bought into the fairy-tale wedding,\" she says. \"But the fact that the press were giving Kate all this fanfare before she looked amazing is a bit weird, because it's obvious she got a stylist. Regardless,\" she adds, \"no one cares about the mechanics behind why someone looks good.\"\n\nSCENE 5: BAGGAGE\n\nThe fact that Mulberry created and named a bag in Alexa's honor\u2014and that it is one of the British heritage brand's most popular styles\u2014is still somewhat surreal to Alexa. \"To think, my mom was going to call me Anna, and someone at the hospital was like, 'No, Alexa is a cooler name.' My mom had already had three children by then, so she was like, 'Whatever!'\"\n\nSomewhat surprisingly, Alexa the person has only one Alexa the bag. \"A brown one,\" she says. \"Maybe I ought to ask for another.\" She feels \"weird\" carrying it, though. \"I'll start using it again one day,\" she says. \"It just seems a bit much now, like, 'Hey, guys, guess what I'm carrying?'\" Of seeing other people with it, she adds, \"All it does is make girls feel awkward when I walk in and they've got it on them.\"\n\nWhat Alexa lacks in Alexas, though, she more than makes up for in Chanel bags. Asked how many she owns, she demurs: \"A lot. When I bought my apartment, they were like, 'Is there anything you want to insure? Any jewelry?' I was like, 'Nope, nothing. All I've got are these Chanel bags.'\" The Chanel bags are insured. \"Something for my daughters to inherit one day,\" she says.\n\nSCENE 6: ONE-WOMAN SHOW\n\nWe're sitting at a window table in Caf\u00E9 Mogador, a casual but buzzing Moroccan restaurant in Manhattan's East Village near Alexa's apartment. Alexa is wearing an Alexa Chung for Madewell palm tree\u2013print shirt and seventies-style cords with too-small Miu Miu boots (\"I got excited and wore them out of the shop before I realized they weren't the right size,\" she says). Slung on the back of her chair is the first Chanel bag she ever purchased (\"I saw it at Heathrow Airport, and there was a tax-free sign, so I was like, That's sort of a discount\"). We're talking about boys\u2014or rather the lack of boys.\n\nAlexa and her boyfriend of four years, Arctic Monkeys front man Alex Turner, recently ended their relationship, so she's newly single in a new city. \"Where are they? Seriously, where the f*** are they? There seems to be a boy drought in New York City this summer,\" she says. She does, however, let slip that her cue when she sees a cute one is \"BGA\": bloody gorgeous alert (another one for the Alexicon).\n\nAn NYU student comes up to our table and asks Alexa if she can take an iPhone picture with her. \"Sure!\" Alexa says. When the girl leaves, Alexa sighs. \"It's never boys who come up to me. It's always cool-looking girls. It's very handy for my straight male friends. They love that I attract this bevy of beautiful young women.\" She laughs.\n\nIt's hard to believe Alexa has any trouble attracting members of the opposite sex, but for the moment, at least, she has plenty to keep her occupied. \"It's good to be on your own in an exciting city,\" she says. \"This is when you do stuff for yourself. Right now is a real turning point. Everything I thought I knew is no longer. I think this is the year I have to grow up. I don't know,\" she says. \"Maybe I'll become a power woman.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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