#2014 tumblr vogue series#

I was like ‘By hook or by crook, this will happen,’” Chung explains on a Zoom call from her home in London. “Honestly, it was as dumb as I wanted to have said that I've written a book before I was 30 so that was kind of the deadline in my mind. It was only meant to be a snapshot that reflected a fun moment in Chung’s life as a 29-year-old-the deepest it gets is an essay about heartbreak. The Guardian’s 2013 review described the book as a “stoned fashion student's end-of-term mood board,” writing it off as a “missed opportunity” for Chung to clap back at being praised as a symbol of “thinspiration” and address “the omnipresent negative facet of her success.” The writer even went so far as to label her as “an It girl for the kind of haters who like to pose as righteous.”īut the intention of It was to provide an “inside look at her fascinating world” through a collection of personal writings, drawings, and photographs. Is that even possible anymore?”Ĭritics, on the other hand, were not all fawning over It.

“It's crazy to think of her ascending to that cult style-icon status pre-Instagram, pre-Twitter, only fueled by style bloggers, Teen Vogue streetwear pages, and Tumblr blogs. “She was like the perfect cocktail of everything that the public wanted,” Sicurella explains. From Sicurella’s point of view, Chung had this effortless elusiveness, or what she describes as “that very high pinnacle of unattainable coolness.” Savannah Sicurella, a writer based in Atlanta, Georgia, fondly remembers begging her parents to buy her a signed copy of It for her 14th birthday. I forgot that it was even book after a certain point because it was everywhere.” “People would put their gold jewelry on something and take a picture of it for social media, I just wonder how many people it or if they were just using ‘It’ as a prop. “I'm not kidding, in every UGC photo, was spotted somewhere in the background,” she says. Alayna Giovannitti, associate social media director at Urban Outfitters, remembers how excited the team was about the opportunity to interview Chung for a feature on the now-defunct blog about the book release. In 2013, It was seemingly everywhere-you couldn’t walk into an Urban Outfitters without seeing the hardcover strategically stacked on the front display table. Between the television hosting duties and editorial gigs for British Vogue, she was considered the ultimate It girl by many, but it was her debut book, It, that flung her to a new level of adoration, and became the status coffee table book of the era. Her knack for making the most mundane things seem exclusive to her (like when she became a purveyor of “the boyfriend sweater”) is now a hallmark of influencer culture. She had perfected the art of looking cool in every way, to the point where anyone and everyone thought they could also easily pull off wearing Barbour jackets with Hunter boots.Ĭhung was more than a global style icon, though: she was a proto-influencer, before we even had the terminology for this genre of celebrity. In 2010, she inspired a Mulberry handbag while also putting brands like Madewell, AG Jeans, and Superga on the map.

#2014 tumblr vogue series#

(A credit to Chung’s tendency to remain ahead of the curve, the series was one of the first shows on TV to include tweets in the live program.) Though she appeared as an on-camera presenter in the early aughts, the MTV talk show was a pivotal moment, and soon, Chung was catapulted into the mainstream, where she would evolve into something so much bigger than your average television personality. (Twee, on the other hand, was embodied by Zooey Deschanel.) During that period, the English model was highly revered, with social media sites like Tumblr, specifically, hosting a voracious appetite for all things related to Chung, who served as a collective moodboard for a loyal cult following to obsess over her indie take on androgynous style.įrom 2007 to 2017, Chung was admired for her polished wardrobe, envied by teenage girls everywhere for her former relationship with Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner, and celebrated for hosting her very own MTV daytime talk show, It's On with Alexa Chung. Look closer, though, and you’ll see that the prime of the “Tumblr girl” can actually be traced to 2013, and her muse was none other than Alexa Chung.

At the moment, Gen Z can’t seem to get enough of the aughts-just look at the overflow of TikTok videos dedicated to recreating Y2K fashion, or Vogue’s recent bold declaration that “the 2014 Tumblr girl is back” if you need examples.