Long before Alexa Chung became fashion’s it-girl, she was just a regular model who had to go through all the trials and tribulations like every other supermodel who wanted to make it big.
In an interview with The Times Magazine, Alexa used that opportunity to shed some light on the injustices that happens frequently in the fashion industry.
Alexa exposed that as a aspiring teenage opted to keep a lot of her modeling gigs a secret from her parents:
“I never really asked my mum or my dad’s advice during [my time modeling] … I didn’t want to tell them too much about the reality of what was going on – when I was taking the train to London and being asked to do certain things,” she says. “I already knew it was wrong. So, you know, if there was a casting where some creepy man there had gone on to his flat in Ilford and you know, ‘Take your clothes off…’ and if I’d have done it, I won’t tell my mum because I know that that’s wrong […] In hindsight I look back and think, ‘Did you really need an 18-year-old girl to strip in your front room?’’
She says that she kept a lot of this incidents private from her parents because “she didn’t want to tell them too much about the reality of what was going on”.
Now, at 29, Alexa Chung’s a household name in fashion and is a successful TV presenter, model and style icon. But she says that the experiences still haunts her and constantly gets “loads of flashbacks”.
“I’ll be reminded of something because I’ve sort of blocked it out and I don’t really think of those days. Like recently, I was like “Oh my God. That’s so not on”.