Want to watch Alexa Chung talk transatlantic style, getting fired from a DJ job, and stereotypes within the fashion industry? Us too! Hot Wings, a YouTube show where celebrities answer interview questions while eating increasingly spicy chicken wings, has featured everyone from Terry Crews to Liam Payne, via Cara Delevingne and Seth Rogan. In the latest episode, and one we'd anticipated for some time, Alexa Chung came into the hot seat.
In fact, the show's host Sean Evans, honoured Chung with the title Patron Saint of Hot Ones. "Without Alexa Chung there would be no Hot Ones," he explained, stating that the show's premise was inspired by a Popworld skit the former presenter worked on earlier in her career. Wearing a cornflower yellow ruched, square-neck dress by Molly Goddard ("a casual smock dress from the 1800s" - her words, not ours), she answered 'hot questions with even hotter wings.' Being a vegetarian, the wings were vegan.
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She talks about her transatlantic lifestyle since moving to New York in 2009, and how the 'Alexa Chung effect' is just as strong in the UK as the US. Answering a series of 'either or' questions on London and New York, she admitted she thought London 'had better style'. "There's room for reverence and quirkiness. It's expected and celebrated for people to be eccentric, whereas in America there's safety in uniformity. You get fewer looks for dressing like a freak when you're in London."
She also cleared up an awkward press moment that took place in 2011 when she was the red carpet host of the Golden Globes. "I said 'Olivia Wilde, another person who looks really beautiful tonight, there she was in a gorgeous gown, huge skirt, so large in fact, you could probably smuggle three humans under that thing'. I said humans, they heard 'Cubans'..." The team de-mic'd her, turned their backs, and she had to hitch a lift home with a friend...
Having been in the fashion industry since she was 16 years old, Evans quizzed Chung on aspects of the fashion industry that don't get talked about as much. "What's one thing that really is as bad as people say?" "Photographers being creepy," she says. "There's always just a little bit of a transaction - it can't not be. Because you're being observed and captured as a purely visual asset, and then they're the ones doing it, so that power dynamic is always going to be weird."
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As the sauce got progressively hotter ("my mouth's in a spice prison!"), Chung shed light on some of her career's funniest moments, from mistakenly thinking Emma Stone was her best friend to being fired from a DJing gig by Kate Moss. You can watch all 24-spice-filled minutes of the show below.