Does Alexa Chung Still Have ‘It’?

It was a different world when Alexa Chung rose to sartorial power.

She wore high-neck blouses with flat pointy shoes. She wore black tights under denim shorts. In paparazzi photos, holding hands with her indie rock boyfriend, she wore peacoats over minidresses. So we — women around her age, give or take five years — wore peacoats over minidresses, too.

The year was 2009, and “influencer” and “creator” were not yet jobs. Ms. Chung, then 26, was an MTV host during the final era of that being the coolest job on the planet.

On a sticky afternoon this summer, inside a dark bar on Avenue B in Manhattan, I asked Ms. Chung, now 40, how she defined her job these days.

“It’s so hard, isn’t it?” Ms. Chung said. “I guess designer.”

She had recently asked the 12-year-old daughter of her partner (the actor Tom Sturridge) what she thought she did. “You’re a writer,” the girl replied. That’s also true enough; Ms. Chung contributes sporadic essays to The Financial Times. In 2013, she released a pink coffee-table book, “It,” during a particularly active time in her social life.

Ms. Chung described the Madewell collection as “focused on things I actually like,” as opposed to “some pop-star early naughties stuff that the kids like.”Credit…Luisa Opalesky for The New York Times

“My editor at the time had to come to the East Village and literally trap me in the apartment to finish it,” she said. Friends buzzing at her door were turned away. Parts of the book were drafted on bar napkins. “I had a panic attack at the book launch because I was like, ‘I don’t even know if this really represents me, and I feel really weird about it.’”