Alexa Chung’s unique style has made her London’s hottest export, while this month’s London Fashion Week looks poised to rock the fashion world. We salute the capital of cool in this our London Issue. To begin, Alexa’s close friend Henry Holland interviews the star. The pair join four other London style makers to reveal their secret haunts in My London. An ELLE girl’s London memoir follows. Finally, enjoy our four ELLE collectors’ covers, specially designed by some of our favourite London designers

The sum of her parts is not immediately promising: teenage model turned TV presenter with rock-star boyfriend; aged just 24 and giddy with attention; out every night, in the papers every morning. But Alexa Chung’s celebrity isn’t based on her career, which hasn’t risen much beyond classic hangover telly, nor her liaison with Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner, which obsesses the tabloids but which she won’t discuss. Alexa Chung just really, truly loves fashion, and fashion loves her right back.

The face of Channel 4’s youth programming has a kittenish appeal – all doe eyes and long, long legs. She would never take her clothes off in a men’s magazine and she’s too clever to fall out of a nightclub half-dressed. She has a natural beauty that she doesn’t play on – her favoured outfit is a smock dress and loafers, often worn with a cardigan and glasses. Her quirky style – a knowing mix of high street and vintage, with a smattering of labels such as APC and PPQ – means that no cool list is complete without her.

Alexa slips quietly into an east London bar for our interview, her hair wet and naturally wavy, trademark flicks of black eyeliner her only make-up. She wears a plaid shirtdress from Spitalfields market with a grey knitted gilet from Gap, charity-shop boots and a well-used Mulberry bag. She quickly dissects her outfit when asked, without a flicker of irritation – it’s what people are interested in, she knows that. She’s warm and funny, naturally sarcastic but not unkind, and you suspect she would be a lot of fun after a few drinks. She switches her showier TV persona on and off, shrugging uncomfortably at the It girl tag.

A nice, middle-class girl with a Home Counties accent and impeccable manners, Alexa grew up in Hampshire, where her parents still live. She used to have a pony. Gawky and uncoordinated, she was scouted by a model agency at the Reading festival, and turned down a place at university because she dreamed of becoming the face of Chanel. She never did, though. Instead, she jumped around on trampolines for teen mags. It didn’t make her happy. A job presenting T4’s Popworld was offered in 2006 and she leapt at it. Her self-deprecating humour and unexpected fashion choices were an instant hit.

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