‘I’ll be damned if I’ll be caught in an outfit someone else has,” says Julia Fox. “That’s where I draw the line.” Fox’s latest hair color, a buttery Velveeta-branded gold, is peeking demurely from under a ’60s-esque scarf as she joins me on Zoom.
It’s just days after she made headlines debuting the new hue — and not too much else — at a Knicks game. Later that week, she stepped out to publicize her new E! show, “OMG Fashun,” in a pair of shoes made of blond hair extensions. It’s hard to imagine a world in which this style icon ends up twinning with anyone. In an industry that so often seems to demand on-trend lockstep, she’s so completely, playfully herself.
A disruptor by nature, Fox is even putting her stamp on single motherhood. She brings her 3-year-old son, Valentino, to appearances and gigs, and always makes sure to nurture his creative side. Inspired by her Velveeta ’do, she says, “Valentino wanted to dye his hair. So yesterday we dyed his hair green. And it’s like, if a man was in the house, he’d probably be like, ‘Don’t do that!’ I can just do what I want, and not worry about fragile masculinity. We’ve got none of that in our house. We’re very free. We do what we want.” (Valentino’s father is Fox’s ex-husband Peter Artemiev.)
Who better to host a show about upending the dictates of fashion? The new competition series on E! centers Fox as the muse for whom aspiring designers must create outfits using unconventional materials. “You don’t have to break your bank account to be cool,” says Fox. “You just have to think outside the box a little bit.” To be fair, a “little bit” for Fox might be a lot for most viewers; some of the show’s challenges involve creating a look entirely out of garbage, using sex toys as decoration or incorporating dried bugs into the ’fit.
On the show, invitees must wow the host and her fellow judges, including Zendaya stylist Law Roach and a rotating cast of guests. Fox wrestled with the part of the show in which designers must be eliminated — the winner takes home a $10,000 prize — and tried to leave the dirty work to her friend. “I let Law kind of be the bad cop. Law will read the hell out of an outfit — he does not give up!” Fox says with a laugh. “But then there were some outfits that were just blatantly bad, and then it was a little easier for me.”
She’s an icon, an actor, an author, a podcaster, a designer — so hosting a fashion series “feels like such a natural progression,” Fox says. She’s been known to make ensembles out of leaves. Or towels. Or a dry-cleaning bag with a shirt still in it. She’s criticized “Fashion Prom” (aka the Met Gala), saying invitations are based on “politics, privilege, who your parents are and how much money you make.” The time is ripe, she says, to push young artists to explore ways to do luxury differently: “In a world where fast fashion is actively killing our planet, it’s important to highlight upcycling.”
Fox seems on course to put her stamp on nearly every facet of entertainment. She’s soon headed for New Mexico and a Jordan Peele-produced movie, and she’s recorded a single. “The working title is ‘Down the Drain,’ also the title of my book,” she explains. “Charli XCX heard it and invited me to perform it at an event at the Boiler Room. And it went kind of viral, and this company reached out and wanted to give us a bunch of money to shoot a video.” She’s all in, of course. “I just want to do everything. I don’t want to leave one box unchecked.”
Fox has always been an attention magnet, from her upbringing in Italy to her days at City-As-School high school in Manhattan and the moment that changed everything: her supporting role in the 2019 Safdie brothers movie “Uncut Gems.” Playing the salty mistress to Adam Sandler’s shambolic Diamond District jeweler character, Fox stole every scene she appeared in and came away with nominations from four critics’ associations for her breakthrough performance. That’s when it started to become clear she wasn’t going to follow the normal playbook on how to cultivate your image. “I used to get into a lot of fights [with publicity teams] because they wanted me to dress boring — you know, classy and pretty,” she says.
In her aforementioned 2023 memoir “Down the Drain,” Fox laid bare a turbulent upbringing and often deeply traumatic early adulthood, rife with drug use, abusive boyfriends, mental health struggles, friends lost to overdoses. She writes unsparingly about what she describes as a wildly neglectful mother, who still lives in Italy, and an abusive father, now a New Yorker. She delved into her fleeting sort-of romance with Kanye West, and chronicled her dominatrix work as an 18-year-old high school senior, which she actually hails as a great training ground for becoming a public figure.
“I feel like if I hadn’t become a dominatrix, I would not be who I am today,” she says. “It really opened my eyes to a lot of stuff. I’d never really been in an environment where the women rule. There’s no other place like that. Being in there and being, ‘Oh my god, I’m powerful.’ ” She still frequently nods to an S&M aesthetic, favoring skintight black and a heavy kohl shadow she’s called the “Fox eye.”
But in her Alexa shoot, the fashion icon leaned into a more vintage look that synced with her single mom vibe. “I wanted to channel the transition from the ’50s, where it was very oppressive, and the ’60s, which were more about self-love and liberation. What I wanted to convey in this story was that a man used to live in this house, but now I’m just living my best life with my son. And I’m not raising him to be the s–tty man that was in the house before.”
Greg Swales
Fox brought Valentino to our shoot, and aims to push back on the idea that parenting should be siloed away from work and life. “I feel like, in America, it’s all about doing child activities,” she says. “When I grew up in Italy, it was always like, you just bring the kids wherever you’re going. Here, parenting is just so isolating, it’s like social suicide. I feel like that’s why there are insane postpartum depression rates.”
Mother and son reside in a Harlem brownstone with Fox’s model-photographer friend Richie Shazam Khan, Khan’s boyfriend, and … a ghost. “The house used to be hers,” explains Fox, who first mentioned the paranormal roommate earlier this year at Sundance for the premiere of the Steven Soderbergh thriller “Presence,” in which she stars alongside Lucy Liu.
“I remember telling Richie, ‘I think there’s a ghost that wants us to move in. Is that weird?’ After we moved in, we went down to the basement and saw this shrine that the previous owners left. All her photos and trinkets. It’s still up, and we go down and visit her.” Valentino has also made the ghost’s acquaintance. Fox reports: “I grabbed a photo of her and said, ‘Was it this woman?’ And he said yes. Now he’s obsessed with ghosts.”
“I feel like if I hadn’t become a dominatrix, I would not be who I am today”
Julia Fox
She’s sworn off men for years; I ask if there’s anyone who’d be capable of changing her mind. “He would have to be inherently a feminist man, in the sense that he would need to understand he’s never going to be the center of my world,” she says. “I’m entitled to love my friends and my child and my career. I’d never be able to spend much time with him, and he’d have to be OK with that. Like, I just don’t think he exists!”
Fox has earned a reputation for candor, a dynamic contrast to her oft-winking fashion statements. “It’s just, like, cringey to be passionate about anything,” she says with an eye roll. “Everyone’s so dead on the inside. I probably am, too — no shade. But when something is blatantly obvious, I’m going to call it out.”
Last year, she shared that she’s been diagnosed with autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder, saying she experiences huge peaks and valleys in productivity. But, she tells me, knowing she’s neurodivergent is incredibly helpful. “Now I have the education and the diagnosis, and I can know why I am the way I am,” she says. “I’m definitely on the spectrum. I think it’s a gift.” Despite her fierce public persona, though, she’s always felt like she didn’t quite fit. “I overthink everything. I get insecure. I have low self-esteem, because I’ve always felt like such an outsider.”
At 34, she’s eager to see how aging will factor in. She loves her various hair colors — Velveeta curls included — but she’s into gray, too. “I have a feeling I’m going to go white, because my grandma’s hair was completely white. It was so beautiful,” she says. “When I got my first gray hair, I was like 24, and I was still brainwashed. I was like, ‘Oh no, I’m no longer a fresh flower!’” Now, she says, “I’m going to make it really cool and desirable. I’m not going to be fighting the clock. I think it’s about owning it and being proud. My best friends died, and I’m here, and I’m going to f–king own that shit.”
EDITOR: Serena French, STYLIST: Anahita Moussavian, PHOTO EDITOR: Jessica Hober ,TALENT BOOKER: Patty Adams Martinez, HAIR: John Novotny at Opus Beauty using Davines, MAKEUP: Colby Smith at The Only Agency using Kiki World, MANICURE: Mo Qin at The Wall Group using Leafgel USA, FASHION ASSISTANTS: Alex Bullock and Jena Beck, ON-SET ASSISTANT: Meghan Powers