Alexa Chung, a television presenter and former model, was born in Hampshire in 1983. Shaping up to be fashion’s poster girl for 2008, with the most requested haircut, she is best known for co-presenting T4’s Popworld with Alex Zane.

I suppose I am quite tomboyish: I like to look as if I could climb a tree or punch someone in the face. That’s what I tell make-up artists. It’s my way of rebelling, I suppose, against the “pretty pretty” look of the commercial jobs I did when I first started modelling.

When I was at primary school, I was asked to draw my favourite outfit and I drew three different ones because I couldn’t decide. For the most part, though, growing up in Hampshire meant either horses or ballet, so most of my childhood was spent messing around in my brother’s jumpers. My mother was never the yummy mummy type; she spent most of the time running around in an apron after four kids. She did put us in Oilily (that psychedelic children’s brand), though. So, while fashion wasn’t this big influence, looking back we were always well turned out and I still remember enjoying matching up my culottes with colourful tights.

Embarrassing but true: Geri Halliwell was my style icon, because I thought her hair was so cool with all those streaks in it. I also used to like princesses – Princess Leah, for example – which is funny, seeing as now I’m mostly into comfort dressing and anything with a sailor vibe.

I was beginning to tire of the modelling and was going to do an art foundation or fashion journalism course, but then Popworld happened. The girl-about-town label isn’t irritating; it’s actually rather nice, because you are sent some pretty cool stuff. It’s odd to have acquired this style icon tag, though, because everyone in Shoreditch dresses the same. I have a stylist, Steph Stephens, who used to be the editor at ELLEgirl, but she’s more of a mate and we go shopping together. She’s pretty honest; she’ll tell me when I look like a dick, which is rather excellent.

I do have doubles of everything: perhaps it’s a deeply rooted Chinese consumer gene (my father’s Chinese), or perhaps it’s just erring on the side of caution. As for younger girls saving up to copy the “Alexa look” – let’s face it, it’s not as if they’d have to save up much. I mostly dig around the vintage shops near where I live. I don’t feel I have to be responsible in the way I dress, but then I don’t walk around in provocative clothing. No mother is going to be saying: “Take off that Alexa Chung fishnet vest.” Actually, I quite like the idea of a fishnet vest . . .

What I hate about fashion is how it changes so much and so fast. Why would anyone buy green simply because it’s the hot colour: great if you like green, but why buy it if you don’t. So many people seem scared to carve out their own style. I actually like quite classic things: cable knit jumpers, blazers, satchels, preppy long college scarves. And I’m obsessed with the Sixties and Seventies, probably because I love those films, Darling, Masculine, Feminine and Blow Up. I spend most of the time wishing I was Jane Birkin – hence the fringe, which my hairdresser, George Northwood at Daniel Hersheson, actually cut too short the first time. I think girls back then were so much cooler – sexy without being porn stars or so in your face, wearing Lycra everything. Everything was just that bit softer then.

Sadly, I never did get the Chanel ad campaign. Probably because I was so willing to make a dick of myself, what I got instead was riding backwards on a donkey for the sofa company DFS. Although the worst job by far was when I had to straddle a massive loo roll in a factory in Finland, wearing just my underwear. It was for Now magazine. I was supposed to be playing the sexy secretary but the other model started crying, saying her boyfriend would go mad if she appeared in just her underwear and could we possibly switch roles. That was a very low point.

— Alexa Chung presents Vanity Lair on T4 from February 3.

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