"Girl bands can dominate music but only ever one at a time. That is the rule. Don't try to change it."

today is going to be a good day for one of the following reasons:

1. I just found, whilst looking for my phone, the other half to my yin-yang ring which i lost so many years go
2. I just found my phone, again
3. I'm going for a Chinese buffet later
4. then i'm going out and i'm going to get drunkier than drunk

yesterday was a good day for all of the following reasons:

1. it was valentines day which automatically puts (almost) everybody in a happy-ish mood
2. i got a free packet of doritos
3. i got sniffed by a sniffer dog and it didn't catch the drugs that weren't hiding in the front of my left shoe
4. my mum got me a cute valentines cushion

and definitely NOT because my boyfriend bought me flowers and IT by Alexa Chung of which i have wanted to buy for ages and ages and ages and i am very thankful  that made the day *Wayne's World style voice* excellent.

I'm a few months behind on the Alexa Chung, IT band wagon but i guess it's the same with everything else. I hadn't completely ignored it i mean i was brooding over it for months in Urban Outfitters, they just don't sell it where i live and i think getting my cameras developed and various other unnecessary things were at the top of my so very short to-do list. I received it last night and considering my boyfriend is here and all I haven't had a chance to read it but i flicked through it and i snapped a few (a lot) of my favourite pages. I hope there's a lot related to being a guide to getting her life i think that would be really helpful.

What I really need right now, instead, is someone to tell me how to survive the rain in an acceptable way without looking so ridiculous that 14 year olds stop sarcastically shouting "swagger" down the road at you when you're trying to get home in a hail-storm. I was wearing a chiffon tartan maxi skirt and never again. I may as well have been wearing chiffon tartan trousers and my legs were red raw.
So I hope her book tells me how to survive that.

I feel like if there was a time to be more un-hip than i already am then it is now.

I don't think there is any way to be any cooler than Alexa Chung other than to maybe befriend Alexa Chung but even then you still won't be up to par, i'm sorry.

I think i'm just really into the fact that it's like some teen girl sat in her room assembling all of her favourite photographs and things and just started writing about them and then turned that into a book and now it's a book that people just like to read. I mean, obviously. But I can't decide if it's a biography or just an amalgamation of all the things she likes all into one place. The pastel pink and the (dare i say) "vintage" effect in every photo makes it so cool and enjoyable (for me), it's like a scrapbook she's just scanned through and annotated. 

Her description of cult-classic movies really gets me. Films like 'Heathers' and 'Lolita' and characters such as Margot Tenenbaum. I love how she sums them up in tiny wee sentences, something which I have never been able to do. if i love something, I love it too much to the point where i ruin it by trying to describe it. I just hate it when you love something and you try to explain it to someone else because you're so desperate for them to understand you but you're afraid they'll never understand the extent of your love so you just carry on and on about it til you ruin it. And I was cursed with such a thing, so thank-you, Alexa.

One of my favourite pieces is her page on Keith Richards, or her page on George Harrrison. Both boys are huge loves of mine (for no particular reason other than they are both extreme badasses). Her description of turning to men for style-ideas is one i wish i could highlight (if it weren't for ruining the actual book...) and her quote "this is for the girls who dress like awkward boys" from winning her British Style Award acceptance speech, is one i like to live by. There has always been some sort of jealousy, for me, around boys who are exceptionally tall and can get away with skinny jeans and pointy boots in an all-black get up. I was always jealous of this image and always wished i was born a boy so i could portray this image of something i'm not quite sure what. So instead I dated one of them. 

I think in terms of the female-form, Alexa gets this spot on with her incredible legs, pointy shoes and long rain coats. She embodies the female requirements of everything i was jealous of in those kinds of boys. 

Me and my friend Dominika often talked about next year in terms of reinventing outselves. Not entirely but I think Alexa is definitely a source of inspiration for that. I always get this image of me showing up to my uni on the first day, arriving at my flat in a pair of mom jeans, an old shirt and a pair of American Apparel Cortland Eyeglasses and some suede loafers. I don't want to reinvent myself but I want to appear cool enough so that people think that's how i've always been.

In this last picture that quote is something i find especially relevant and it made me think of no other girl band than Haim. I don't want to say anything on it too much, mostly because I've ran out of things to say.
There's this one quote by Tavi Gevinson which says "always be Stevie Nicks" and as much as i agree with Tavi i think it's pretty much applicable to every badass female idol out there.

"Always be Alexa Chung" - she taught me to wear sparkly eye shadow and it be okay even though it's not the year 2000 any more.

rachel
xoxo