It would be safe to say that twenty-four-year-old Brit-by-way-of-Brazil Alice Dellal isn’t the typical Chanel lady. She has a nose ring and upwards of fifteen tattoos. Half of her head is shaved. She prefers leather jackets to tweed ones and silver spikes to pearls. And instead of a 2.55 (the gold standard of pouches for most girls), her pockets have always served as her purse.

Meet Chanel’s latest addition to its stable of iconic bags. “What I love about the Boy,” Alice says, “is that it’s rough around the edges. It isn’t a perfect little lady bag.” Indeed, with punk luxe chains and seatbelt-style straps, it’s anything but prissy. Inspired by English hunting bags, the carryall takes its name from Boy Capel, Coco Chanel’s onetime paramour.

To hear Karl Lagerfeld tell it, Alice was born to be its leading lady. “It takes more courage to push a look like hers than to be average,” he says. “Alice has style in the extreme.”

When I meet Alice at Chanel’s rue Cambon headquarters on a sunny April day, she has already staked a claim on a black patent Boy with a chain belt. (She also has a gray stingray style.) “I like something I can wear all the time that goes with everything,” she tells me. (Editor’s note: “Everything” in Alice’s book translates to devilishly short skirts, band tees, and shredded denim.)

You can’t go wrong with classic black, but since I can’t compete with Alice’s rocker persona (the only things I shave are my legs, and I have zero tattoos), I decide to test-drive a bright coral. With a bag this cool, I’m perfectly happy letting my outfit take a backseat!

The first stop of our Paris rendezvous—aprés Chanel, bien sûr—is the Palais Royal, where we can’t resist a photo op on artist Daniel Buren’s black-and-white columns. Next, we hit Monster Melodies. When Alice isn’t posing in Chanel campaigns, she plays drums in London band Thrush Metal, and DJs (check teenvogue.com for her top tracks). The last stop on our tour de Paris is Left Bank classic Café de Flore, where we order croque-monsieur and settle in at a sidewalk table.

Observing the chic passersby, Alice admits that French style is hard to resist. “When I was growing up, my mother always wore Chanel,” she says. “My sister, Charlotte [who designs haute shoe line Charlotte Olympia], has a tattoo of the logo,” she adds with a laugh. “It was the first label I knew about.” Since taking on an official role with the house, she’s even worked such Chanel classics as tweed jackets into her wardrobe—with cutoff jean shorts. “It’s a modern way to mix styles,” she says. And what of the baggage that comes with her new post? “I don’t go anywhere without it,” she asserts of her Boy bag. Needless to say, her pockets are out of a job.