Tad Dramatic: Introducing: The Chep

My sister never seems to tire of looking back at my old bebo pictures, of me with a 'free face lift style' side ponytail, rara skirt and slouch boots and laughing her little head off. Yeah I was a chav, and what? But thats the way it was: you were either a chav, a prep or an emo right? (If you want to go really old school we can talk about townies and mambos? But errr, lets not.)

Me and my sister were discussing one day about how the whole chav epidemic is pretty much over now and most people just have a decent level of fashion sense. There's a sense of style that we particularly like, but we could never quite sum up. So anyway we got sick of saying "you know one of them girls who wears high tops and a skirt, that just looks kind of chavvy but really aint and has good hair, yeah she looked like that" so we came up with the word 'chep'

offical definition of a chep (from the fashion dictionary of Sian and Eboni Jones)

a chav + a prep

A person who mixes sterotypically 'chavvy' clothing with stereotypically 'preppy clothing'
Someone who has prodominantly urban taste in clothes and music but with a hint of preppyness.

girl example:
chavvy: high tops, thick gold jewellery
preppy: worn with quirky patterned jumper, choppy cropped hair

guy example:
chavvy: polo t-shirt, dappy style hat
preppy: rolled up harem style jeans, boat shoes, geek glasses
(dribble)

History:

The first prominent, modern day (so much chep style is influenced by the 80s but lets keep it simple for now) chep that I can think of is Lily Allen who burst onto our screens in 2006 with 'Smile', rocking a 1950s style prom dress 'chavvy' hoop earrings and high tops. You also have people like Pharrell Williams and Lupe Fiasco who pull off that "Hi I'm a hip hop guy, but I'm not typical" look quite well.

Ultimate:

The ultimate chep female for me right now is Rihanna, she's an r&b singer but with her wild ever changing hair and high fashion choices, she's far from being your typical ghetto fabulous diva.

The ultimate chep boy ... none other than Travie McCoy! He's all tatooed and pierced up like a skater but wait, is that a flat peak and nikeys we spy? Oh yes he's a chep and a damn fine one at that.