Julia Fox knows how to make a lot of nois

Julia Fox is part model and part actress, but she’s mainly a woman who wears as few clothes as possible and makes as many headlines as possible.

At 35, her resume contains far more paparazzi documentation than cinematic documentation, and as of today she’s still known primarily as someone who was briefly the partner of America’s most famous and controversial ex: Kanye West, with whom she hung out and was photographed moments before he replaced her with a more obedient version, his current wife Bianca Censori, who is sometimes called “Julia Fox from AliExpress” and shares with her a love of public nudity.

After the relationship with West, she declared abstinence from relationships and last year came out of the closet as a lesbian.

Fox was born in Milan to an Italian mother and an American father and divided her childhood between the two countries. The relationship with her parents was difficult, and at 15, she moved in with her boyfriend, who was a drug dealer, until he went to prison. During her youth, she worked as a dominatrix, got into trouble with the law, was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward and became addicted to heroin, until she finally got clean and decided to seek a better future for herself. From 2018 to 2020, she was married to Peter Artemiev and had a son named Valentino with him.

She has behind her one film that’s half-etched in memory (Uncut Gems), some completely forgotten ones, and another new film called The Night Always Comes, which debuted over the weekend on Netflix. She also published a well-regarded and successful memoir called Down The Drain, composed of equal amounts of life insights from her turbulent biography, including dealing with abuse and drugs, and sex descriptions with the men who starred in her life.

Kanye West, by the way, was not mentioned by name in the book, but readers easily identified him as the character she referred to as “The Artist” and told that he tried to get her to publish “a completely fabricated version” of their meeting.

Later, she even said in an interview that she greatly regrets the relationship with West: “I hate it! It was only a few weeks, but it was enough for a lifetime. I was probably in the most uncomfortable situation of my entire life, and that says a lot. I don’t want to be known as someone’s girlfriend.” Truth or fiction, what’s clear is that from Fox’s publicists’ perspective, that brief romance is a gift that keeps on giving.

If you want to be particularly generous, you can relate to her as a rebellious figure operating outside the consensus. In a less forgiving mood, you can summarize her work as a scandal enthusiast whose fame lies in exposing her body. The truth, apparently, revolves (in front of the press flashes) somewhere in the middle.

Like paparazzi photographers’ dreams and etiquette and deportment instructors’ nightmares. In terms of clothing items, this usually means black, tight, revealing, low. If you add the adjective “as bizarre as possible,” you’ll have the precise definition. Her fashion is everything except boring.

Watching Fox stride on red carpets with every fashion choice of hers is like watching a train speeding without brakes. We find ourselves in a state of constant anxiety – will the neckline collapse? Will the skirt fall to the ground? Will everything that seems to hang by a thread remain hanging by the end of the evening? This tension is what makes Fox’s appearances as fascinating as a trapeze act in a circus.

Fox is the physical embodiment of a pose-free statement of faith – the same effect that Lady Gaga perfected to an art form. Fox is not Lady Gaga, and it seems she knows it herself. She’s not trying to conquer the music or film industries – you can see her work in the field more as ongoing flirtation – and her talent focuses on using fashion and her appearance. There she goes all the way in everything related to interaction with the media, and especially with cameras, and manages to always be unique and full of interest.

Some will call her fake (and we must admit that many of her physical assets didn’t come with her from home), but there’s great truth in her shameless need to say, in any way: “Hey, look at me.”

At the Pretty Little Thing show, she was dressed in a bikini composed only of small jewelry, and at the Pandora jewelry brand show, she went with an identical concept and only replaced the jewelry with watches.

To the Revolve festival held in California last March, she arrived wearing a body-colored corset, knee-high boots, chaps and a back made only of laces. A month earlier, she appeared at Vanity Fair’s Oscar party in a completely see-through mesh dress decorated with hair curls, reminiscent of Botticelli’s painting “The Birth of Venus.” That same reference to Venus also starred in her photos, rising from the sea in a white, small, wet and see-through bikini. Ursula Andress, for those who remember, did it first in an iconic scene from “Dr. No,” with a white swimsuit, less small, and with much more class.

Sometimes she also allows herself to expose a little less skin, but balances with eccentric clothing or accessories. Like in Marc Jacobs’ whipped cream dress, which she paired with silver shoes shaped like cigarette tips. At this year’s Hollywood Fashion Awards ceremony, she went with a completely circus look (and also full coverage) in a white suit with Marni’s rose print, white face makeup and a house-sized black hat. At the SXSW festival in Texas, she wore a dress made of tied sleeves – just tied sleeves.

Recently she’s been sticking to creations by Turkish-British designer with the hard-to-pronounce name Dilara Findikoglu, who became a celebrity favorite in the past year – from Doja Cat, through Kim Kardashian to Cate Blanchett.

Between undressing and covering up (symbolically), she makes sure to deliver matching statements. She provides feminist seasoning to her fashion choices with the sentence “Women lost their lives so we could dress like this.” She confesses that she hates working and that she wants to be at home, scrolling on TikTok and eating sweets all day. For dessert, she comes out against the Metropolitan Gala and against Anna Wintour, claiming the event bores her: “Lots of politics, money and status, very little fashion.”

We can safely assume that at least in the near future, Fox will continue to provide us with more of the same – fashion from bizarre realms, provocative appearances, stressful partners, embarrassing quotes and messes, lots of messes.

After considerable deliberation, it seems that – perhaps surprisingly – Fox deserves applause. She’s not a woman of high class and doesn’t have a single bone of elegance, but she’s bold, innovative, funny and always surprising. And also, of course, sexy. These compliments and applause are punctuated here and there with tomato barrages for moments when her fashion throws up its hands to the desire to be provocative at any cost.