‘I’ve just noticed a big line of drool on my top,’ Julia Fox says, looking down at her black hoodie with a jewelled United States flag stamped on the front... and, yes, there’s a silvery line of dog spit to complement her blue jeans and denim Telfar Uggs. She overslept and just managed to walk her St Bernard before we met, on an early morning in Manhattan. ‘Well, whatcha gonna do,’ she shrugs.
Well, what she’s been doing is a pretty brutal promo circuit –national daytime television appearances and newspaper profiles, on top of New YorkFashion Week, ad campaigns and brand deals. And she’s just finished putting her weird, whirlwind, vibe-shifting life down on paper, with the release of her memoir, Down The Drain. We’re chatting today in a hidden nook off the studio where she’s about to shoot her first Cosmopolitan cover.
‘I’m an artist in the role of a lifetime... me,’ Julia writes in the candid, heart-on-sleeve look into a life where almost every move could create a headline or spawn a meme. A life, I quickly learn from reading, that has a history of abusive relationships, overdoses, arrests, hospitalisations and the tragic 2019 death of a friend that propelled her out of substance abuse. It’s the story of a woman fighting to reclaim her narrative.
The extent of Julia’s evolving fame and explosion into public consciousness varies depending on who you’re talking to. For many, she’s a viral icon, a newsfeed staple for what she’s said, worn or done that day. But for others? They might only know her for her very brief, media-mania-sparking relationship with Kanye West (something she describes as ‘the least interesting thing about me’), or for her breakout role in 2019’s Uncut Gems alongside Adam Sandler. Then there are those three sprawling syllables that ricocheted constantly around the internet’s collective mind for about a year... ‘Uncah Gahmz’.
However you may be aware of her, it’s clear that while Julia may say she never chased celebrity, fame was always going to find her. Her years have seen her live many different lives. She’s been a party girl, an underground scene kid, a dominatrix, a sugar baby, a fashion designer, a model, a provocative artist(who once staged her own funeral), an actor, producer, podcaster, single mum, soon-to-be host of fashion design competition OMG Fashun (from the team behind Queer Eye) and now author. It’s not easy to neatly sum up her life and career so far, and that’s part of her magic.
Booked and busy
With so much to cover, unsurprisingly, she describes the actual writing process as ‘pretty excruciating’, dodging her editor’s calls for drafts and putting off knuckling down. Think back to the red carpet at the 2022 Vanity Fair Oscars after-party, where Julia – with Black Swan-esque eyeliner – told an interviewer that her book was a ‘masterpiece’ already. The media quip was more manifestation than anything – because Julia hadn’t even started writing yet. ‘Not a single word,’ she shares. ‘After that went viral, I thought, “Well, shit. I have work to do.” My goal was 300 pages – you can read that in a day. I wasn’t writing War And Peace, you know what I mean? People have shit to do.’
She spent up to 12 hours in front of her computer each day, and almost a year after that red carpet date, was able to officially announce Down The Drain. ‘It was raw, like picking a scab, and cathartic, like crash therapy,’ she says. ‘I needed to be really authentic. Trust me, there were times I wanted to turn it into a ghostwriter, but I couldn’t get my shit together to find one. Then it got too late and I had to do it!’
Growing up as more than a little bit of a rebellious teenager, her missing-person poster was pasted all over New York by her frenzied parents, as she ran riot around the city with pals, rarely returning home. ‘I was always very aware I wasn’t being raised right,’ she says, looking back on her coming-of-age years. Her tumultuous childhood saw her born in Milan to an Italian mother and American father, and she spent her early years bouncing from her grandfather’s home in Saronno, Italy, to her father’s boat, squats and houses he was renovating in New York. ‘In away, my parents were successful in raising me to raise myself,’ she reflects. ‘They were obstacles I got over with my head held high, great job. Maybe if they didn’t throw me to the wolves, I wouldn’t be as strong, resilient, independent, clever, street savvy.’ Aged 15 and back in New York, she moved in with a drug dealer boyfriend. She was banned from Bloomingdale’s for stealing (years later, she’d rock up to the same department store to star in its ad campaign) and became a dominatrix after answering a Craigslist ad. She moved through increasingly dark relationships fuelled by violence and addiction. She prayed for, and acquired, a sugar daddy. It’s a whiplashing young life punctuated by grimy and glamorous parties, multiple losses and grand larceny.
‘My early encounters with men are tough to look back at. Same shit, different face,’ Julia says, answering each of my questions emphatically, with piercing eye contact. ‘I’m looking back like – ick, gross, cringe, paedophile! I have an understanding now that I was a victim, but feeling like a victim never feels good. It doesn’t feel empowering. It felt very vulnerable, cringey, but in writing about it, I would just power through – I couldn’t stop – knowing that I’m not unique in those experiences that so many women go through.’
‘I’m speaking and writing with young women today in mind,’ she continues, pulling quickly on her blue vape. ‘I want my overall message to be that you can always change your life. Decide you want to do this very thing now, or decide you don’t want to do that any more – it’s never too late to turn it around.’
Lights, camera, Julia
Today, Julia lives in Manhattan with her two-year-old son, Valentino, with a strong support network of chosen family around her. Career-wise, she likes to ‘always have my tentacles in different areas – six or seven projects in the works at once’, with the ultimate dream being to write and produce. But she’s also been embraced and emulated by the fashion world. ‘I’m seeing a lot of me on the runways – a lot of designers have me on their mood boards,’ she says with a wicked grin. She has a charming, quick-witted confidence. On set, the Cosmo team reel at how quickly she can hit her mark, slipping in and out of one bulbous red two-piece and shimmying into a sculptural, alien bride-esque white gown, and then into knee-high furry raver boots. ‘I’ve tried this before,’ she points to a chainmail dress, ‘I look amazing in it.’ On Julia’s 5ft 3in frame, it weighs heavy, but she never loses her feline-like posture, moving from one killer pose to the next.
It’s clear that, whenever there’s a camera around, she knows what to do – and when to take control. A viral video of her interaction with one paparazzo in the street last year saw Julia ask him not to photograph her with her son and, instead, offered planned time to shoot with her at a later date. She understands that celebrity-dom is entertainment and a service for the masses – and iconic shots of her grocery shopping in her underwear cheekily say a lot with very little.
Recently, she’s been shot around New York in a silver birdcage-like corset, and made headlines for turns in latex, wet-look leather, DIY denim and even a dress made from autumn leaves. She’s made ultra-low-waist trousers a calling card – and helped to resurrect it from the 2000s for us all, gulp – and toted kooky accessories such as a human hair clutch. ‘People get so, so mad about my outfits,’ she says. ‘The response is way crazier than the outfit itself!’
But while the tabloid-celebrity dynamic and paparazzi power exchange has been going on for decades, what Julia does is use her relationship with that world as a catalyst for change. Our conversation jumps from Photoshop and the paparazzi to romance and relationship power dynamics; the topic variety something her 1.7 million TikTok followers will recognise well.
When discussing the response to her appearance, she leans forwards as if to pound a gavel, ‘It just really goes to show how even women want other women to stay in line,’ she says in a sarcastic, sharp sing-song. ‘Cover up, dress down, dim your light. Women’s bodies should be celebrated and shouldn’t just be viewed as sexual objects. Anyone getting mad at me for showing a lot of skin has slapped this label on me as a sexual being. But I’m so much more than that – and sex is the last fucking thing I do with this body. I’m proud of my body. Why wouldn’t I wear something revealing, really cool and artsy? Why choose to interpret my body as a sexual object? Your boner isn’t on me, that’s on you!’
Julia is a steadfast advocate for keeping it real – both online and IRL. At Cosmopolitan, we always keep any retouching of images from our photo shoots to the absolute minimum and, aside from basic colour correction, only alter images to remove things like bruises, tattoos and scars if the person we’re shooting requests it. (We want anyone featuring in our magazine to feel comfortable and confident about it.) So, it’s a relief when, onset – as she always does – Julia asks for minimal to no Photoshop. ‘There’s a really dangerous and unrealistic message with beauty standards right now,’ Julia explains. ‘Girls seeing all that... their brains aren’t developed enough to rationalise that people don’t really look like that.
‘It’s hurting young girls and boys, because their minds are so warped that when someone doesn’t look like an anime character in front of them, they’re gross.
‘I want to be on the right side of history for how I impact our younger generations, striving for perfection you can’t achieve. Who cares about being perfect,’ she takes another inhale of her vape, ‘and perfect for who?’
But living her life so unfiltered does come at a cost. Social media – and particularly TikTok – was once a supportive space, but now it’s strictly more a ‘tool’ for her.
‘It used to get me in a bit of a mess,’ she says, grimacing. ‘It was once a reprieve – I could check out there. I don’t feel as inclined to share my life there now. I’m not an influencer, you know – I think I’m influential, but I’m not an influencer. I had to reel myself in and let my work speak for itself.’
How much is she thinking about which fires to stoke on social media, or maintaining that main character energy? ‘I wish I could say that I masterminded my viral moments, but I don’t,’ she says. ‘I’m not thinking that intelligently. I feel like it just happened.’ She’s also been on the receiving end of relentless online abuse. ‘I’ve been getting bullied online since the dawn of the internet,’she says. She tells the disturbing story of an ex who created anInstagram profile of her dominatrix photos and followed all her friends and family. ‘But what used to feel like a kick to the gut now feels like a breeze in my hair. I’ve developed a thick skin... no matter what, a million people try to tell me when they’re mad at me for something online. But at the end of the day, I know who I am. I’ve come too far to let that shake me.’
Motherhood and misogyny
Reclaiming her narrative from a world desperate to think it knows and defines ‘Julia Fox’ is a major goal. ‘I didn’t truly realise how misogynistic society is until becoming famous, you know?’she says, sitting back in her armchair. ‘They’ll just take everything away from you.’ How she presents herself is, in part, a rebellion against that. Her day-to-day style is very much in the comfy hoodie and jeans realm that I meet her in – ‘It’s conducive to my life right now, which is a lot of manual labour.’ But when she’s not schlepping around, she wants to go all out for the FROWs and parties. ‘The duplicity of woman,’ she says with a shrewd smile. ‘I like to have fun and be crazy. That’s why I love independent designers who push the boundaries.’
She sprayed her roots grey as a ‘love letter’ to ageing and had her eyebrows bleached by legendary make-up artist Pat McGrath.‘[We’re seeing] more women really resisting appealing to the male gaze, and instead, seeking the validation of the female gaze. Because women are so into the bleached brow on each other, I find. Men’s brains... can’t compute. It signifies this cultural shift of having fun again with how you look.’
But, she believes, society isn’t yet ready to let the woman live outside the bore of the male gaze, or, the male name she’s frequently attached to following her two-month relationship with Kanye West, much of its narrative carefully controlled by the rapper and his team.
‘I’m constantly having to resist being defined by that,’ she says. ‘A lot of the time that I’m in the media, his name’s right next to mine. It’s annoying – in the grand scheme of my life, it was a millisecond. It doesn’t mean I don’t like him, I just don’t like that. I’m my own person. I’ve had a lot of achievements, before and after him.’ She alleges he offered her a boob job, which she turned down and felt hurt by. He disliked and changed how she dressed. The relentless performative nature of the relationship and manipulation was why she finally pulled the plug – ‘I was weaponised.’
‘Women are so often defined by their relationships with men,’she continues. ‘What I dream of is mass rebellion, but that would be dangerous for us women.’ She knows the negative archetypes foisted upon women all too well. ‘Society loves the idea of the“untrustworthy woman” – men don’t trust us. Or it’s the “devil woman” – men are scared of us,’ she says, pursing her lips.
Staying impenetrable to such labels proves difficult, especially when any change or exposure of your body eclipses your words and personhood, becoming clickbait. Like most women, she’s fluctuated in weight her whole life – ‘something as a female celebrity you’re not really allowed to do. But it’s so normal. It’s crazy to have to explain or defend it’.
Becoming a mother showed her the power of her own body.‘My body is so tough. It made another body. It is a miracle. I am so, so strong.’ Julia hard relates to the saying, ‘Love your kids, hate motherhood.’ ‘If you’re putting in the work, it’s so hard,’she says. She describes her son as ‘a little dictator’ who keeps her life in check. ‘I have a very high-maintenance child,’ she says. ‘The child I deserve, for sure. He is my anchor.
‘For him, I am stable and reliable... I have to conserve a lot of my energy for my baby, so I’m often saying no to other things.I can feel like such an asshole, but I’m choosing me and my son.I’ll never look back and regret not flying to Paris to do a campaign so I could spend time [with him]. I don’t want him to ever feel the way that I did – like an orphan.’
Julia became pregnant as her marriage headed into divorce– she decided to go through with the pregnancy because the calculated birth date was the same as a recently deceased friend’s. That friend’s spirit kept her going during the tougher elements of pregnancy and motherhood, including her battle with postpartum depression. ‘When breastfeeding didn’t work for meI felt defective, like, not a real woman – isn’t that crazy? I felt very alone when I was pumping for such a little amount of milk at all hours. I had really dark thoughts. I would think like, “If this was the caveman era and there was no formula, what would I do? Is it natural selection?” But formula was the best thing for him – he was getting vitamins my body couldn’t give him. I wasn’t well then.’ Right now, she doesn’t have the bandwidth for dating – no surprises. ‘Maybe when my son is like... six,’ she says – then shakes her head quickly. ‘That could be a time when maybe I start to put myself out there to meet someone who works as much asI do, and maybe also has children so they understand that they’ll never come first to me.’
In her memoir, her female friendships are explored with the same expansiveness as her relationships. ‘Our fights are sisterly– horrible and physical... Even in the rage and anger, there is only love at the heart, we accept each other like no one else could.’ She’s also written a movie with her friend, Sara Apple, having just secured their first round of funding and signed a deal.
‘I wouldn’t be here without those friendships,’ she says. ‘Their support and strength and sobriety. My relationships with people in the industry are just superficial compared with my ‘day ones’ or middle school friends.’ Still, Madonna is one industry relationship she holds close. ‘I love Madonna. She’s given me a lot of really great advice, and there is a special mix of strength and vulnerability that she embodies. She is like Mother Nature to me.’
Their friendship and bond make sense as, like Madonna, Julia has endured enough chaos, hardship, addiction, loss, abuse, absurdity and adventure to do 10 lives over and, as a result, is a fierce advocate for the weirdos and the walked-over, refusing to be anyone’s plaything. With that mentality, and so many spinning plates, all eyes are on Julia. Does she feel in control of her own life? ‘When you’re famous, it feels like that’s what other peopleare doing to you. You have very little say – other people google you, watch you, dissect you. I can feel a little powerless, but then also forced to take responsibility. I know who the fuck I am. AndI’m like... a warrior. Nothing has – or will – change me.’
Down The Drain by Julia Fox is out now via Fourth Estate
Lead red outfit, Julia wears: Top and skirt, both Quine Li. Rings, Jacob & Co
Cover image, Julia wears: Hat, gloves and leggings, Avavav. Boots, Paris Texas. Earrings, Shaun Leane
Photographer: Marcus Cooper, Editor In Chief: Claire Hodgson, Creative Directors: Mallory Roynon & Declan Fahy, Stylist: Cassie Anderson, Make up: Julian Stoller, Hair: John Novotny, Nails: Elizabeth Garcia, Tailor: Wesley Nault, Interview: Anna Cafolla, Picture Directors: Rachael Clarke and Emily Murphy, Visual Director: Kristin Giametta, Talent Director: Lottie Lumsden, Entertainment Director: Maxwell Losgar, Digital Design: Jaime Lee, Videographer: Matthew Kern, Fashion assistant: Danielle Flum, With thanks to citizenM Hotels
