Last year, I spent a lot of time staring intently into a computer screen at a person who does not know I exist. Let’s just say if restraining orders were determined by hours spent watching someone’s YouTube channel, British model, designer and TV presenter Alexa Chung would have a pretty decent case against me.
Alexa Chung’s YouTube channel started in 2018 with sporadic videos promoting her clothing label and for the last couple of years has included tutorials (for makeup, skincare and how to dress), field trips to fashion shows and interviews with other glamorous, tousled hair women in which they give advice about dating or sleeping or throwing dinner parties from their tranquil, presumably-Santal 33-scented apartments.
Alexa Chung has taken me to Dior Haute Couture fashion shows, New York ballet studios, art shows at London’s Royal Academy and other places where security would probably tackle me before I made it through the entrance.
When the pandemic hit last year and she couldn’t take me to these places, she started doing what we were all doing – looking at photos of past nights out and reminiscing with friends about drinking too many wines.
Except her nights out were the Met Gala and her friends were fashion designers like Christopher Kane, Phillip Lim and Erdem.
I’ve always found YouTube beauty tutorials to be soothing, even though face-wise I really don’t know what I’m doing. I only discovered Alexa Chung’s channel last year, but I have followed her career for much longer than that. It’s not unusual to have a sort of icon in your mind, someone from a film or band or Instagram whose style you want to emulate. But honestly, I know I should be ashamed about the amount of details I have collected about Alexa Chung over the years.
Alexa Chung often references 1960s French pop singers and actors as her beauty inspo – it’s fair to say that she is my inspo.
As a seasoned host (of TV and other YouTube series for British Vogue), Chung is a charismatic, funny presenter who you want to spend time with, so it’s no great mystery as to why her videos are pleasant to watch. Her beauty tutorials are peppered with confessions that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing. “I feel like I’m letting you down, like I’m like a bad mum,” she admits after lamenting that when model Rosie Huntington-Whitely does beauty tutorials “she knows all the things” . Instead of tips about exact techniques, she tells you how to do makeup when you’re hungover at Glastonbury and only wearing one gumboot – and wonders “why is looking flushed nice” anyway?
What drew me to the channel is a tutorial for the signature Alexa Chung messy hair. I can finally achieve the effortless wave, I thought triumphantly as I grabbed a small section of strands to curl away from the face (that’s what Alexa’s hairdresser George Northwood said you should do).
After watching the video for a fifth time, my arm aching from being suspended in air while holding a molten curling iron in my hand, I wondered, Is it creepy how intently I am copying someone else’s hair? – before deciding that it was not creepy, and that true creepy people never stop to ask themselves if they are being creepy and besides, it was probably similar to the way that Alexa idolises Anna Karina (it’s not creepy to know that!).
It didn’t matter anyway; I could never get it right. My limp hair flopped down at the end, no hint of an effortless curl. And then I realised: it doesn’t look the same because I’m not Alexa Chung. I’m not a model. No one has ever named a bag after me. Wait a second, I’ve never even been to Glastonbury. I gave up.
I do wonder if my dedication to the channel had something to do with the sudden shift in some markers of my identity – the friends I saw, the nights out and the concerts I attended, things I defined myself by – being stripped away. Maybe I was clinging to things I found comforting and familiar: listening to The Libertines, contemplating buying penny loafers and, once again, trying to copy Alexa Chung’s hair. Look, even she had to cut her own hair in lockdown. None of us are immune.
Or maybe it’s just an enjoyable channel and intellectualising entertaining escapism is unnecessary. “Did you notice I did something different to my hair?” I asked my friend Anna, after trying out Alexa’s Androgenous Hair Tutorial. “Ahh … yes,” Anna said, obviously lying. Thank goodness I have more time to practise.