On the 2022 Oscar’s after-party red carpet, Julia Fox went viral after teasing her upcoming memoir. “So far it’s a masterpiece, if I do say so myself,” she famously purred, her eyes smeared with inky black eyeshadow and her neck gripped by a leather hand.
That masterpiece — a memoir titled Down The Drain — is here. And while promoting it, Fox’s contradictory clothing choices have offered their own statement-making narrative.
The book details Fox’s time as a teenage runaway, a young sugar baby, and a dominatrix in New York City. It visits her past struggles with drugs, neglectful parents, and abusive relationships. And yes, it touches on her salacious situationship with Ye (formerly Kanye West), whom Fox refers to only as “the artist.”
What does one wear to talk about a soberingly traumatizing collection of lived experiences? For Fox, it’s been a mix of off-kilter prep, exaggerated academia and edgy sexiness.
At The Drew Barrymore Show last week, she channelled ’80s corporatecore in a massive boxy suit. The speckled gray blazer, billowing shorts and oversized business briefcase was a decidedly new look for Fox, who’s best known for her see-through slip-ons and shredded-up separates. With its unmistakably large proportions, the ensemble felt like a comedic take on the power dressing in elitist academic circles.
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The very next day, she switched gears in a risqué-meets-royalcore ensemble. The all-white look was comprised of a ruffled off-the-shoulder top with voluminous pantaloons layered underneath a pair of frilly undies. With the context of her tumultuous journey in mind, this purposeful aesthetic whiplash feels particularly apt.
You see, in the book, Fox recounts having her wardrobe choices controlled, specifically by Ye. One story reportedly recounts Ye offering to “get you a boob job” after she tries on a top that doesn’t fit right. “I feel like he’s using me in some weird, twisted game,” she writes in the memoir. “It makes me feel dirty.” But these days, Julia Fox’s experimental style is all hers.
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To appear on Good Morning America, the 33-year-old put a rebellious take on the preppy schoolgirl oeuvre. Her white collared shirt and studded black tie was fashioned as a backless halter top, paired with a multicoloured Chopova Lowena skirt and completed with sky-high stiletto boots.
At a book signing, she stepped out in an armour-adjacent outfit. Her motorcycle jacket was further hardened by padded shoulders and hulk-like ab outlines, with her matching micro-mini shorts completing the biker-leaning visual.
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To appear on The View, she wore a long leather dress with a corseted bodice featuring severe studding and striking red detailing. Melding stereotypical BDSM elements with a quiet luxury silhouette, this odd pairing feels true to her genre-bending self-expression.
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Since she was catapulted to widespread fame — first as the other woman in 2019’s Uncut Gems, then as the brief girlfriend to Ye in early 2022 — Fox has gone through a slew of reductive associations, many of which positioned her as a muse to be looked at. When it comes to her book — and the outfits worn to promote it — she seems to be reclaiming all these labels and serving them right back to us.
Through it all, her project has been met with glowing reviews, with Time saying Fox makes the case for herself as “one of her generation’s most authentic storytellers.” Above all, her writing is hailed for being upfront and unabashed, not unlike her clothing choices.
And while other memoir authors work to carefully craft a strategic public image, Julia Fox is not interested in wrapping up her narrative in a neatly tied bow. You may not get her story or her style, but you can’t deny its gritty authenticity. It’s all there in the title; Fox sees the bright side in going down the drain.
“Hitting rock bottom is so essential sometimes,” she said on The View. “You can only go up from there.”
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