In September 2022, Alexa Chung and several editors (guilty!) and influencers donned rain hats and sequins to wave a fond farewell to her seven-season Barbour collaboration at London’s Towpath Cafe. Almost two years on, her hot takes on waxed cotton jackets are back – this time at Glastonbury.
I mean, who could resist? Chung, who shuttered her namesake label in March that same year, hit pause on designing to become simply a darling of the fashion scene again, with trips to Venice courtesy of Max Mara, custom looks by 16Arlington’s Marco Capaldo, and love letters to fashion history at Vogue World. She is, as they say, booked and busy. But when old friend Barbour, who once let Alexa revamp its anoraks in homage to Liam Gallagher, came calling, she couldn’t turn down another trip through the archives.
The Edit by Alexa – which Chung premiered in the VIP area of Worthy Farm, alongside fellow Barbour guests Sienna Miller, Saffron Hocking, Lennon Gallagher and Laura Jackson – combines all the nostalgic charm and sweet details of her previous capsules for the beloved outerwear brand, but this time with wellies. It’s part Countryfile (Chung grew up in riding wear while galloping through Hampshire meadows on her pony Pip), part Balmoral (she’s always been partial to checked lining and a silk headscarf), but feels a touch cheeky – like Alexa, who injects a sense of humour into everything she touches.
Glasto is the perfect forum in which to show off these new characterful classics, not just because the world positively salivates over anything Alexa and co choose to wear in a field, but because few events showcase the wearability and durability of clothes quite so well. There are not many jackets that can, for example, take you from a PJ Harvey set on the Pyramid Stage to Jamie XX at Woodsies, and then down the Rabbit Hole via a misguided trip to Shangri-La, before you finally watch the sun come up at the Stone Circle. If all this feels like a foreign language, then just know that it’s multi-purpose fashion at its best. As Chung proves, those quintessential Barbour staples still look as good thrown over a metallic slip now as they did back in the 2010s. Well played.
Sign up to be the first to shop the collection, which drops on 19 September, at Barbour.com/festivals
