Hipster it girl Alexa Chung is getting her own TV show about thrift shopping. Thrift America is scheduled to broadcast on PBS (you know, the channel you watch Antique Roadshow on) next summer. The 26-year-old style icon’s signature look is simple, understated, thrown on and always comfortable. I’d describe her as the perfect embodiment of lesbian hipster style. And by that, I mean that Alexa Chung is my own personal style goddess.
“All of my beauty icons are men,” she told the New York Times. “It’s all about effortlessness. It’s all about looking underdone.”
Jane Keltner de Valle, fashion news director for Teen Vogue, called Alexa the Kate Moss “for the new generation.” And on her own skillfulness with layering and living in England, Chung told the Times, “The weather plays a big part over there … It’s always cold and unpredictable. And also I quite like the slightly dorky aspect of English dressing.”
Along with Maya Singer, Chung will travel across the country to comb racks of thrift stores and get knee-deep in garage sale bins to find stylish, second hand clothes and furniture for special Style.com projects. Some of the American cities they’ll be hitting up: Orlando, Detroit, Nashville, Alabama and Brooklyn as well as international cities like Paris and London.
“In the first episode, Ms. Chung helps Pamela Love, a gothic jewelry designer, create a pop-up shop in London during Fashion Week,” the New York Times writes.
It does seem a little strange that someone whose name sold thousands of $1500+ Mulberry handbags is now going to be spending her time riffling through the salvation army $5 rack. Although her style is very thrifty-vintage, I doubt anything in her closet is pre-owned or thrifted; it all probably just, you know, looks that way — on purpose.
One thing’s for sure: it’s a great time for this kind of show. Fashion conscious consumers are also becoming more environmentally conscious and second hand and consignment stores are popping up all over the place.
Chung is pretty huge in England (she was even named one of the 100 most powerful women in Britain by The Sunday Telegraph), but is best known in America for her MTV talk show It’s On With Alexa Chung, a live pop-culture show with music and interviews which was cancelled after two seasons, although it was seemingly well-received.
