How To Not Look Like You're Trying Hard When You're Wearing Chanel To A Chanel Event [Updated]

There's nothing better than pairing high fashion clothes with practical lows. And no one can teach you better than Alexa Chung.

Say you're going to a Chanel event. Well, surely you have to wear Chanel, after all Karl Lagarfeld is going to freaking be there, so you acquire a stunning if not formal tweed shift dress. What do you pair it with?

Well like any fine wine you go to the liqour store and buy yourself some chips. This mentality is all over the outfit above, and to tell you the truth, I'm loving it.

A lot of stuffy women wear Chanel, but there's also a lot of women who try too hard and wear Chanel logo anything. So pairing this cream white dress with some heavy gray winter stockings is already bringing down the palette from fussy and difficult white to a more easy going winter friendly gray.

What about shoes?
What about them. Clogs were the rage on the Chanel runway (for a handful, at least), so why not go against the grain a little bit and do the Chanel clogs better with some studded platform sky-high Marni clogs. Marni is youthful, irreverent and down right eclectic (and Alexa is a fan!).

Perhaps the best example of bringing down the Chanel-ness from the Chanel dress is to stick a hipster pin that only you know the meaning of, sidekick it next to a handful of chain necklaces, and top of the look with bed head and a cloth drawstring brag made out of a loud print. Having the low low (the chains, the bag, the pin) with a steep slope to high fashion (the Marni, the Chanel) makes this a pretty compelling high and low outfit to my eyes. It's downright ballsy.
And since it's former model Alexa Chung doing the pairing, it probably will work for her more than it will for any other mortal.

UPDATED: So I got a little backwards (thanks, reader!). The good people at Fashion Spot say the clogs are Miu Miu (which they do look like!) but the people at Vogue UK say the clogs are Chanel. And that bag is actually Marni. Which makes sense because some Marni stuff looks really arts n crafts sometimes. Unless the pins and things are über fashion too, I believe we've still got an Alexa Chung not fully playing by the rules. Now only 15% rogue. The post lives.

Clogs here too; "Leather clogs, from £470, Chanel."



(Image Sources: The Fashion Spot, Vogue UK)