IT Girl

I'm going to go ahead and preface this with the fact that before reading IT, I honestly couldn't have cared less about Alexa Chung. All I knew about her was that she somehow always ended up in Elle magazine with perfectly adorable, dishelved hair and enviable flats, and a dorkiness  so perfectly executed that it landed her in the front row at Calvin Kline. 

Also Alex Turner. I knew about the Alex Turner thing.

But I mean, whatever. 

I honestly had no idea what she was even famous for. 

And then, she turns around and writes this book, IT, and it's all suddenly very clear to me. 

The woman has made a very lucrative career quantifying, decoding, living and perpetuating this amorphous idea of cool. She has distilled 'I don't give a fuck' into something palatable. Likable. Enviable even. And then she bound it and put her name on it. 

My inital thought after discovering IT on the shelf, next to a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, was exasperation. Because I'm a snob. I had this momentary lapse where I began losing my faith in my chosen profession, convinced that it'd been further saturated by malnourished, watered-down writing. It's the same feeling I get when I see that Lauren Conrad's written another book about her favorite pink lipstick shade and the correct way to construct a topknot. 

The thing is though, something compelled me to buy it. I BOUGHT this book, you guys. I spent my money on it. Intern money. Money usually reserved for such necessities as food, toilet paper and box wine (kidding, but just about the fact that it's in a box). I don't know why. Maybe the cover. It FELT like a book. Hard-backed with no sleeve, rough to the touch and monogrammed with a title. The pages were thick. It was cute and pink. Plus I had this vague notion that she did actally sit down and write the words. 

But the point is, I bought it. 

And then I went home and binged on it for 2 days.

And I liked it. I liked it a lot. I liked it enough to try tie-dyed harem pants and a granny sweater despite my 5'4 inch, slightly bottom heavy frame. 

I guess it's because as I was reading it, I just felt her "I dont give a fuck, I wake up like this, this peplum top used to belong to a 60 year old refugee but I look dope in it and I'm gonna wear it out with my very cool friends and Instagram myself" attitude seep into my fingers as I turned the pages.  

The book isn't exactly a how-to guide. It's  more of a vague road map. She provides a context for her taste and lets you put the pieces together as you see fit. She's catalogued her inspiration for everything from her 'I just had amazing sex' hair to what she chooses to wear to the gym, and suddenly everything you know and don't know about her starts to make sense.

There's an ode to the Spice Girls and just a few pages later you stumble upon a truly beautiful, aching section about heartbreak that I could have seriously used like 3 months ago. Granted, I don't really understand it's place in the book, aside from the fact that harrowing depression has informed some of my best fashion decisions as well. I'm right there with you, Alexa.  

The only problem, really, if you could call it that, is that reading the book is like hanging out with her. It was done so well and so effectively that by the end you've become best friends with someone you can't ever know. She's more familiar to you, and ironically a little bit less cool because you've gotten to see behind the magic curtain. 

If that's the only problem though, I'd call IT a sweeping success. It's something I'll reference again, if only because the pictures she includes are engaging and inspiring, and something that I previously thought was out of my reach - true, effortless fashion sense - was suddenly and literally, in the palm of my hands.