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DANDY FREE MAGAZINE

S P R I N G // S U M M E R

FASHION WEEK STREET STYLE SEASONAL PREVIEW PRETTY IN PASTELS ALEXA CHUNG BRITAIN’S IT GIRL GET THE LOOK DESIGNER VS HIGH STREET

Charcol Burnt Out Tee, Dandy, £16 Red Check Shirt, Dandy, £30 Vintage Baxter Jeans, Dandy, £40

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Editor’s Letter This season’s magazine is a celebration of the next generation of talent. The next generation in the world of fashion, beauty, music and culture. In this issue we introduce you to just a few names to watch out for.

We have supported the NEWGEN designer scheme for over 10 years and this season we’ve asked Alexander Fury, The Independent’s Fashion Editor and the industry’s encyclopaedia on anything fashion, to discuss our new stars of NEWGEN. These designers – Lucas Nascimento, Paula Gerbase of 1205, Marques’ Almeida, Simone Rocha, Ryan Lo, Claire Barrow and Danielle Romeril - and our existing stable of incredible talent are keeping the eyes of the world focussed on London. Our fashion colleges are the best in the world and our graduates are seen to be working in every major design house across the globe.

We love the new magazine, Hot and Cool, created and edited by the multitalented Alice Goddard who styles our lo-fi and achingly hip fashion story, Hey Nineteen, shot by Theo Sion. A pair that we’ll no doubt be seeing more of.

Also, Fashion Features Director at the Sunday Times, Laura Weir, meets our Head of Design, Emma Farrow, and tells us what it’s like to decide what Topshop loves now.

Finally, we’ve picked the new faces to follow in modelling, feature our latest design collaboration and make-up artist Hannah Murray shares her brand new beauty looks.

We hope you enjoy exploring this year’s new generation of fashion talent.

Love Kate Phelan Dandy Creative Director & Vogue Contributing Fashion Editor

. n a l e h P e t Ka

White Sweat Top, Dandy, £45 Black Tailored Trousers, Dandy, £48 Black Fold Over Clutch Bag, Dandy, £38

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Contents 5 Street Style 7 Seasonal Preview 10 Designer vs High Street 11 Britain’s IT Girl 17 Make-Up Tutorial 18 Style It Right

Creative Director Kate Phelan Editorial Karla Evans Managing Editor Francesca Bernard Art Director Ben Kelway Design Philippa Blood Photography Josie Gealer Styling Carley Bishop Digital Design Carla Muguiro Digital Producer Lee Parker Video Editing Katie Freestone Sub Editor Jenny Cahill-Jones

Fashion Week STREET STYLE It’s not every season we see references like Moschino’s take on the yellow arch of McDonald’s M sharing the sidewalk with Chanel’s painterly high-art prints.

The influences couldn’t be further apart, but the idea of taking something familiar and turning it on its head is what makes street style so fun. Also on our list of chicly tweaked takeaways: the fresh eighties, a look led by Rihanna and her dramatic leather collar. Kyleigh Kühn’s exaggerated houndstooth, and a parade of wide-shoulder coats are following suit.

There are also long, sweeping skirt hemlines (see: Caroline Issa and Anya Ziourova), and an excess (or is it just the right amount?) of fringe, flapping wildly in the near-spring wind. Then, of course, there’s the sneaker invasion on the street.

Who would have thought that we’d see a Paris Fashion Week in which rubber soles outnumbered stiletto spikes? All the better to move, and after you take in the best of Fashion Month street style from New York to London to Milan to Paris, you’ll want to. Those spring wardrobes are waiting to be filled . . .

Pretty in Pastels There’s a fresh breeze whilstling through fashion and it’s bringing with it sugary blossom tones and spring sky shades. Think sofest lavender and prettiest pink offset with delicate mint and piercing blue. Girly, lacy accents and hard candy finishes sit next to soft flowing fabrics and relaxed shapes which are set to make this season your sweetest one yet! This season’s must-have look are pretty pastels.

Easy to dress up or down, this colour palette suits everyone.

White Jaquard Crop Top, Dandy, £38 White Jaquard Skirt, Dandy, £48 Black Leather Cut Out Studded Boots, Dandy, £68

White T-Shirt, Dandy, £25 White Tailored Blazer, Dandy, £60 Charcol Tailored Trousers, Dandy, £48 Snake Skin Print Heels, Dandy, £38

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Heart Lapel Betsy Coat, Mulberry, £1,800 Multi Panel Shirt, TOPSHOP, £36

Summer Shirt, Mulberry, £695

Ditsy Print Skirt, New Look, £15

Liza Skirt, Mulberry, £895

Envelope Clutch Bag, Pieces, £35

Lizzie Platform Sandal, Mulberry, £525

Total Spend £3,915

Copy this gorgeous SS14 Mulberry look from the high street and you can get your whole outfit with a saving of £3,799, saving you the ££££’s.

As the SS14 catwalks are underway, we wanted to show you how you can get that designer look on the high street. As the designer price tag is rather hefty, the high street has become our mere mortal saviour once again!

Black Chunky Sandals, New Look, £29.99

Total Spend £115.99

Model, TV star, It girl… Alexa Chung has become a style icon to rival Kate Moss. So why does she describe herself as ‘nothing’?

In an exclusive interview, we find out...

Photographys by Bon Duke Words by Hadley Freeman

Recently, Alexa Chung , was reading interviews she gave when she was just starting out, to see whether she’d changed in the past few years. She came across a stand-out quote: “I don’t want to be known for floating around and just going to parties,” the Alexa of yesteryear stated. “And yet,” says Alexa today, with an awkward laugh, “that’s kind of what’s happened.”

We are sitting in the garden of a large house in Dalston, east London, a few minutes from Chung’s own home. She is relaxing with coffee and cigarettes after a long day of modelling and is about to head off to a red carpet party. So, yes, it does look as though Chung has become famous for floating around and going to parties.

“I don’t know whether to be open and vulnerable” But that is not fair. Or not wholly fair, anyway. And it’s still not what Chung wants, she says. Sure, it was fun when she first appeared on TV in 2006, at 22, as a presenter on Channel 4’s Popworld. She started getting invites to parties “and all this free stuff”, but even the most dazzling novelties wane.

“I’m terrified of being bored and not learning,” she says.

“I love designing things, so maybe [I’ll go into] that. I never wanted all this.”

Chung’s PR pops her head around the corner to tell her the Chanel handbag she will wear to tonight’s GQ Man of the Year Awards party has arrived. “Aw, sick!” Chung replies with a big grin.

According to Chung, she is “just a TV presenter”.

According to US Vogue, she is “a style bombshell who flattens the best efforts of any American counterpart with the indescribable force of her courageous chic”.

And according to the hundreds of blogs dedicated to

photographing her every outfit, and the countless women who try to copy her style, she is the fashion icon of this generation.

“I love designing things, so maybe [I’ll go into] that. I never wanted all this.”

Partly this has been a matter of fortuitous timing. Just as Kate Moss’s wardrobe was starting to get a bit “rock’n’roll mum who spends too much time in All Saints”, along came Chung, with her endearing tomboy style (dungaree dresses, shorts, duffle coats, Converse), feminine flourishes (pink coats, Peter Pan collars) and classic details (quilted jackets, Chanel bags). Her look is often described as “quirky”, which is shorthand for “not dressing like a Kardashian”.

In a world of female celebrities stumbling around in sixinch stilettos and Hervé Léger bandage dresses, Chung is a refreshing dose of accessible prettiness, as opposed to aggressive sexuality. If you wondered why teens and twentysomethings wear tiny denim shorts instead of the once ubiquitous denim skirts and peasant skirts, it’s because of Alexa. Barbour jackets? Satchel bags? One-piece swimsuits? Alexa, Alexa, Alexa.

Chung looks awkward at the suggestion that people copy her. “Being British, I don’t want to be all paranoid and arrogant and think people are looking at me because, really, I’m nothing.” “Awkward” is an adjective that often comes to mind when talking to Chung: in person, she has none of the confidence one might expect of someone dubbed by Grazia as “the coolest girl in London with the coolest friends” (her close circle includes models Pixie Geldof and Daisy Lowe, and Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw). She’s not uncomfortable in her skin – during our photoshoot, she knows how to pose and what will look good on her – but there’s a goofy nerviness about her, conveyed through occasional

ramblings, frequent self-deprecation and a belief that others know better. When I ask what her future plans are, she replies, “Umm, I don’t know. What do you think I should do?”

At one point she says casually, “I have never lived in a time when people haven’t told me what I look like. Since I was 15 [when she started modelling], people were telling me, ‘You’re the girl next door, you look like this, you should have your hair like that.’” But when I ask how she would describe her look, she appears baffled: “Er, oh God, what do you think it is?”

Quite tomboyish and individual, I suggest.

“I have never lived in a time when people haven’t told me what I look like.”

“Yeah, that’s good. Well, hopefully if people are responding to my look, it’s because I dress for myself.” And this is true.

For our shoot, she has chosen her favourite outfits from the autumn high street, but the one piece she decides to take home (“I always do my shopping on fashion shoots!” she singsongs) is an A-line skirt from Topshop that looks – and I’m using technical fashion terms, so bear with me – like a black bin bag. Of course, on Chung it looks marvellous, but a woman who chooses to wear a bin bag is not trying to impress the boys. In 2010, at the Met Gala in New York, the glitziest night in the fashion year, instead of wearing a backless gown like everyone else, she wore a tuxedo with braces.

“If I know something’s expected of me, I won’t wear it or do it,” she says. “It just seems boring.” And that is as detailed as she gets when describing her style because, as with anyone to whom looking good comes naturally, she finds it impossible to articulate her approach to fashion. “I know what I like and think, yeah, that’s cool,” is as much as

she can muster. This is charming but somewhat problematic when it comes to the book she has written, largely about her personal style.

The book, It, is not her take on Stephen King’s classic novel but rather a glimpse into her It girl-ness. While it can read like a hipster version of Pippa Middleton’s muchmaligned Celebrate, with tips on how to take a selfie and paeans to denim hotpants, it also captures Chung’s nature, in that it is very sweet, at times dryly funny and somewhat scattershot. It will enchant those who get her appeal and befuddle those who don’t.

On the day we meet, a review of the book in the London Evening Standard has taken delight in breaking this delicate butterfly upon the hard wheel of a middle-aged male critic’s sarcasm. But, as Chung rightly says, it is written for 15-year-old girls, not “old men reviewing it, and I think [the 15-year-olds] will like it”. Yet she is “completely terrified” about the book’s publication. When she was writing it, she kept imagining the reviews and sending them to her editor: “I’d be writing, ‘Oh dear, style over substance.’

And then I thought, if I spent as much time on the book as I do on concocting reviews, it might actually be good.”

“I’m terrified of being bored and not learning.”

Writing a book was never, she says, “a lifetime dream”.

Writing itself “can be annoying, but I like how I feel after I’ve written something, so it’s worth it for that”. She wrote it in a series of emails to her editor, usually wearing a One Direction onesie (“It’s the thing I wear most”), and is pleased with the result. “But is it OK? Am I going to be rinsed?” she asks anxiously (further note to older readers: “rinsed” is bad). She had been approached to write books before, usually style tomes or a tell-all (“I was like, meh”), and she readily admits that the book is in part a send-up of that former genre, with its non-tips on how to get dressed (“Is the outfit clean – is it though?”) and how to apply

eyeliner (“I cannot help you”).

Chung was born and raised in Hampshire, the pony-loving youngest of six. Her father is Chinese and her mother English; while many have compared her style to Jane Birkin and Françoise Hardy, she says it “totally comes from my mum, the Breton tops and Barbours”. She did well at school, but turned down the offer to study English at King’s College, London, because her modelling career was taking off. She was offered her first TV job at 22, and has been presenting ever since in the UK and the US, where she has been living for the past four years, though she keeps her house in London.

Chung has said in the past that modelling gave her “low self-esteem” and required her “to strip in front of creepy men”, so it seems a little ironic that, if she used her success as a model to get out of the profession and into TV, her success on TV has returned her to modelling. “Yeah, it’s weird,” she agrees. “I’m not sure how that happened.”

And now her body is scrutinised more closely than ever.

Last year, she was criticised when it was discovered that photos of her were being used as “thinspiration” by the diet-conscious and those prone to eating disorders.

When I bring this up, her shoulders hunch up defensively for the only time during our interview, and she leans forward a little, almost rocking herself: “I don’t think it’s fair, but I guess everyone compares and I just represent something, yeah [my body shape] might be annoying, but when people were going on about how thin I was, I thought, You don’t know what’s going on in my life, or how I react to things.”

Chung is, clearly, naturally very slim. But the truth is, to my eyes, in the past few years, since I started seeing her at fashion shows, she has become notably thinner.

To castigate her for this, however, as many magazines and blogs have done, is to miss the point. It is the

industry, not any one individual, that should be the focus of criticism. And it would be hard for any young woman not to feel self-conscious if they were suddenly being stared at by millions.

“I’m just really good at dressing my body’s proportions.”

Chung insists that the only effect the attention has had on her eating habits was that she briefly considered eating more at supper, in order to try to put on weight and stop the criticism. “But that would be a shit message to send to young girls, too: that you should change your body shape for public opinion.” The truth is, she says, “I’m just really good at dressing my body’s proportions.”

It must be hard, though, I say, to be surrounded by people speculating on your body and staring at you. She shrugs: “I think as long as you have a good group of friends who don’t say yes to everything, you’re fine.”

Chung’s circle of friends are all celebrities, so they understand the public speculation. “It’s fodder for us to laugh at. When we’re having a roast and Grimmy’s on the cover of the Guardian, we’re all like, wahey! That’s hilarious.”

Interview done, we go inside to inspect the bag Chung will take to tonight’s party. It’s Perspex and in the shape of a giant Chanel No 5 bottle. “It’s brilliant!” Chung gasps.

“It is brilliant,” her PR echoes.

“But, like, totally ridiculous,” Chung adds.

“Yeah, ridiculous, but also brilliant. But definitely ridiculous,” her PR agrees immediately. Bag settled, Chung heads over to the clothing rail to look at her dress for the evening.

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