When Alexa Chung launched her eponymous fashion label in May 2017, legions of girls who’d grown up idolising the British model and presenter’s kooky glam-meets-grunge wardrobe in the early 2000s were positively chomping at the bit to get their hands on a slice of Chung’s inimitable wardrobe.
However, just five years on and the brand is closing its doors.
Chung took to Instagram on Thursday to say she’s been “gradually been winding down operations” over the last few months, citing the impact of Covid and Brexit on business. “The last couple of years have been challenging for small independent businesses and ours is no exception.”
It’s a sad day for fans of Alexa Chung, both the woman and the all-one-word fashion brand.
When Chung’s first ALEXACHUNG collection dropped in summer 2017, it felt like a fitting career segue for a woman (33 at the time) who had ruled best-dressed lists for a decade and taken home the British Fashion Award for style icon three years in a row. She had a Mulberry bag named after her that attracted a 9,000-strong waiting list and had already experimented with putting her unique style stamp on product through collaborations with Superga, Madewell, AG Jeans and Marks & Spencer.
“This is a moment in my life where I felt I could dedicate all my attention in one direction,” Chung told Vogue at the time. “I’m young enough and excited enough to start something new, but old enough to have learnt a bit. And confident enough to think I could pull it off.”
And in many ways, she did. The brand picked up a roster of luxury wholesalers ( Net-à-Porter, Matches Fashion, Selfridges, Liberty and MyTheresa among them), hosted two on-schedule London Fashion Week shows, a presentation on schedule at Paris Fashion Week and a pop-up presentation in Tokyo. In addition to the mainline collections, Chung did a hugely successful collaborations with Barbour by ALEXACHUNG, currently in its sixth season and continuing until AW22, and Juju Jelly shoes which were re-issued for a second year after selling out.
“The decision to close was not taken lightly,” Chung’s Instagram statement continued, “not least because I am so grateful for the passion and creativity the team at ALEXACHUNG brought with them every day and the faith everyone involved had in this endeavour. I am so proud of the company we became.”
There had however been warning signs that all was not sunshine suiting and embroidered roses at Chung HQ, and that in fact the brand was already in reasonably big trouble pre-pandemic.
Documents filed with Companies House in 2020 show that for the tax year starting April 1 2019, Chung’s umbrella firm Alpha Charlie Limited had losses of just under £2.3 million. Back in 2016, before the brand officially launched, Pembroke Ventures, a consumer-focussed venture capital firm, acquired a 24 per cent stake for £4.1million, valuing the business at just over £17 million. In its latest accounts from September 2021 Pemboke VCT had written down their stake to £250k, valuing the total business to circa £1m.
Chung’s main backer is British businessman Peter Dubens, the co-founder and managing partner of Oakley Capital Private Equity. Dubens has also backed Bella Freud’s eponymous fashion label and in August 2021 he invested personal wealth into the ALEXACHUNG business, a sum he will now have written off.
The ALEXACHUNG brand has not filed documents to Companies House for the year ending March 2021 (as a business smaller than £5m it’s not required to), so its worth bearing in mind that figures available only go to March 2020, and thus do not factor in any Covid-related business challenges.
So, what went wrong?
There is certainly no escaping the fact that it’s been an immensely tough few years for independent fashion labels. Price inflation across raw materials, increased import and export taxes as a result of Brexit and the changed buying habits and reduced retail footfall catalysed by Covid have all created a perfectly hellish storm for fledgling fashion brands. For ALEXACHUNG, a business structured for wholesale, the pivot to become direct-to-consumer during lockdown was a challenge.
However, success has not been impossible (Bella Freud for example has doubled its valuation in the VC accounts since Dubens first invested), and there were other factors at play in ALEXACHUNG’s demise.
First up, Chung positioned her brand in what her Managing Director Edwin Bodson (ex-Haider Ackerman) described on launch as the “high contemporary” category, meaning prices were often significantly punchier than that which her high street-wearing twenty-something fans could really afford.
Her first collection to hit stores included a pair of zip-front overalls for £340, a floral summer dress for £590 and a leather trench coat with a price tag over £1,000. While the prices seem to have relaxed a little in recent years, it’s likely she alienated her most natural customers – the same girls who had voraciously bought into the collaboration she’d done with M&S in the years prior to going solo. Those (probably older) women that could afford a £1,200 leather trench, were likely looking to buy it from a more established luxury label.
It’s also worth noting that while pretty much all of Chung’s designs oozed the inimitable cool-girl flare for which she was adored, there were several items in each collection that only really worked if you were a leggy model - lilac patent PVC leather apron dresses, bias-cut skimpy slips and mustard corduroy flared-leg suits, I’m looking at you.
Chung’s London Fashion Week shows (she joined the schedule in September 2018 and February 2019 was her last of three shows) were always a delightful mish-mash of vibes and aesthetics that emulated the eclectic nature of her own personal style: silky slip dresses with lace-up Victoriana boots and bucket hats, velvet dungarees and clogs and band tees with shiny PVC miniskirts and Mary Janes. It was all immaculately cool and on-the-money without being slavishly on-trend, but was the vibe too eclectic for the average woman to have the confidence to pull off?
Nevertheless, Alexa Chung should be immensely proud of the brilliant clothes she designed and the company she built. “It was beyond an honour to be able to create my dream wardrobe,” says Chung, whose current spring mainline and Barbour SS22 collections will continue to be sold at full price through the brand’s e-commerce site until March 31.
Chung has a fashion instinct that’s unparalleled. She spotted loafers, denim cut-offs, Victoriana blouses, pyjamas as daywear and dungarees before the rest of us (the list goes on) and deserves her place atop every best dressed list there is. While her effort to parlay this powerful style currency into hard currency didn’t come off this time, the Londoner’s enthusiasm for fashion remains, she says, “undimmed.”
Here’s hoping there’s another epically chic Chung venture in the pipeline.
