If there's one style muse who can rock a dated trend and make it look effortlessly cool, it's Alexa Chung.
Though her style agenda has become more sophisticated and refined than her Y2K It-girl heyday, it's still definitively edgy nevertheless. She's brave enough to wear naked dresses to meet King Charles III, adapt her vintage Mulberry bag at home, and wear dresses to garden parties that eschew flowers...
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© InstagramNow she's braved an accessory from the 2K10 era (reminder that Gen-Z's are loving the early 2000s, but they're not quite there with the next decade), and we're surprisingly on board with it.
The 39-year-old spent her summer holiday this year in Italy, and wore everything we want for our own getaways. In an unseen photo shared by her friend Oliver Broughton, Alexa wore a royal blue shirt with ruffles, paired with a white boater, brown flip flops and a tote bag that oozed the 'cheugy' aesthetic.
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What does cheugy mean?
The cheugy aesthetic, pronouched 'choo-gy' (a term unsurprisingly deriving from the Gen-Z vernacular) isn't the easiest to define, but it's certainly not hard to spot. Think back to the 2010's when: 'Live Laugh Love' was the go-to aesthetic; emoji cushions were a thing; Tumblr style serif quotes filled the feeds of the new social media platform we discovered called Instagram; song lyrics were the only acceptable form of captions and Blackberry messenger statuses; and hoop earrings with rows of tassles at the end were the go-to 'statement' accessory. You can probably throw curled hair that isn't brushed out, and Eos' spherical lip balms in there too. Are you getting a serious case of deja-vu? Same.
Alexa's oversized tote, boasted a gigantic 'A' in the centre. Was there anything in the previous decade we didn't try to personalise? Particularly those raffia bags with a cartoon 'lookalike' of the owner, and their name in serif next to it. Or, if you were really cool, you'd have a personalised Fendi Anna Selleria like Cara Delevigne and Sienna Miller did. Alexa's bag however, was given a chicer, 2023 makeover, boasting a cream body with dark contrasting piping amd just one capitalised letter. It was giving cottagecore and quiet luxury all in one go.
Could anybody get away with the trend? Or is Chung rocking it because reviving trends and going against the sartorial grain is in her DNA? There's only one way to find out...
