Yes, guidance. It’s something that, in our youth, might be the only thing worth wanting––to see through the hazy rooms, dreamy substances, the lust and naivety of it all. When you are young and impressionable and learning to fend for yourself in the city, what can go wrong? Well, in 2023, Julia released her memoir and New York Times Bestseller, Down the Drain, wherein she carries the truth about what life holds, with all its trauma and bliss laid bare.

But let’s start seven years earlier.There’s a video deep on the web from 2016 preceding Down the Drain, where a young Julia Fox is being interviewed in support of PTSD, (her self-published zine made with 3125C The Void in Los Angeles that unveils truth through transgression, delving into the dysfunctional communities of the American South). At the exhibition, a cross-legged Julia Fox sits on the floor of the gallery, telling the interviewer that she has a manuscript written for what will inevitably turn into her 2023 tell-all. The interviewer looks at her pensively, as if to ask what a twenty-something knows about life.

Hmm, let’s see. In no particular order: numerous missing person reports filed as she ran away to and from New York and Italy. A proposal from her abusive drug dealer boyfriend in jail. Her quick stint as a dominatrix. Months she spontaneously spent in the Louisiana Bayou which led to the aforementioned art show PTSD. Her fashion label Franziska Fox which was funded by her billionaire sugar daddy, who told her that she was “throwing your whole life down the drain.” Her debut in the Safdie Brothers’ revered Uncut Gems, with which she was mused upon (her character is named Julia after all.) The very public relationship with Ye, the artist previously known as Kanye. Her 2017 exhibition RIP Julia Fox utilized her own blood as paint. Losing more than one friend to overdoses. The birth of her son.

Within the entirety of Down the Drain, there are instances of homelessness, domestic violence, and addiction, but also joy, unconditional love, acceptance, and tales of resilience. While many people might have picked up the book for the tea, the drama, and the thrill, what you’re actually left with is a story of a girl in search of connection and what she is willing to do to find it. By the end, Fox finally finds her chosen family who inevitably become the village that helps her raise her son independently. She shares, “I feel like girlhood and those relationships within it are magic. I really do feel that women are ethereal creatures of the moon. We’re like goddesses and we’re all gifted. We all have superpowers, I really believe that. It’s my happy place.”

We could be here all day (or closer to 10 hours as that’s how long the audiobook runs) unpacking every outrageous and salacious happening in Down the Drain—I mean, it’s hard to decipher if Julia is the luckiest or unluckiest girl in the world. But regardless she has already made her mends. “When people talk to me about the book,” she shares, “I feel like it’s something I already got rid of; I feel like the load has shifted. And we can all carry parts of it that we like, and the parts of it that we don’t like we don’t have to hold with us.”

And there is something to be said for sharing your life’s work, when in fact the work is your life unfiltered. There’s this exchange from the artist to the audience where the art is no longer under the sole ownership of its creator, but now by all who encounter it. But what happens when it is, yes, art, but more wholly your truth? Is her story still her story? Is she setting the most vulnerable parts of herself to the wolves? What happens after the tell-all, after the tea has spilled, and there is nothing left to say and only listen? You move on. “It suddenly doesn’t feel as catastrophic and as heavy as it did when you were just carrying it alone,” she says. “It definitely does feel like it was cathartic in a sense––like there was a cleansing, a purging, a letting go of.”

 Laruicci Headpiece.

Despite the headlines proclaiming her as an industry plant or an overnight success, Julia Fox is someone who has led with intention on and off the screen for years, pouring herself into her work and filling all the cracks. Fox will next be seen opposite Marlon Wayans in the highly anticipated psychological thriller Him produced by Jordan Peele. Seeming to relish the thrill, she will reunite with Steven Soderbergh for Presence with Lucy Liu, where a family realizes they aren’t alone after moving into their new home. More recently, she was announced to star in the upcoming sapphic film, Perfect, wherein she will play a wealthy pregnant woman who falls in love with a younger woman in a sort of escapist fantasy. “I can always tell when an actor is acting and when an actor is telling the truth. So I always try to tell the truth,” she explains, “I just feel like it’s more powerful. But it is a lot more labor and can be more  draining, so you have to find your balance as with anything.”

And balance can be hard when you are juggling perception versus your own reality. With fame reaching beyond the edge of our screens and her life story on view, how does Julia deal with being known? With almost every action being criticized, remarked upon, or idolized? “I think that any strong reaction is great when you’re an artist,” she says, “whether it’s ‘I hate that’ or ‘I love that,’ that’s my ideal reaction. So often, especially when it comes to people talking about me, it’s either a really strong disdain or a really strong love, like obsessive. I feel like artists should be polarizing and artists should be controversial.”

And she’s right—the world is obsessed. But people want more than just a picture, it seems. You see, there’s this pull about Julia Fox, one that’s magnetizing and sparks curiosity. Any simple Google of Julia Fox will yield never-ending results:‍

Julia Fox on What She’s Looking For in a Life Partner

Julia Fox Wears Her Underwear as an Accessory to Back-to-Back Red Carpet Premieres
Julia Fox: ‘Men Hate My Outfits... But I Don’t Care Because the Girls Love It’
Julia Fox Slayed in a Teeny Crop Top With Built-In Nipple Piercings 

Julia, Julia, Julia! There is no escaping it—she’s even immortalized in Charli xcx’s single off BRAT, “360” with its refrain, “I’m so Julia.” After a whole series of viral sound bites haunting everyone with Wi-Fi connection, we all want to know what is next. In a time where the feeds are endless and people are always hungry, Julia Fox seems to be unaware of her own mania.

“I’m not an it-girl. I’m sorry, I’m not,” Julia confesses. “I feel like I’m an anti-it girl. I feel like I’m not an influencer, I’m a de- influencer. I don’t want people to get caught up and spend their money on dumb shit. I want people to look deep into themselves and look inward and dress according to who they really are and follow that life path. I feel like people are so trained to want to be like this girl or like that girl. No babe,” she tells me with a stern finger. “You’re never going to be like anybody if you do that. I feel like you need a really strong sense of individuality and be proud of that. You’ll get where you want to be in life if you’re yourself. And then you’ll find that people are going to start to want to be like you. So it’s interesting, but just be true to who you are.”

In her 2024 debut song, also entitled, “Down the Drain,” she sings, “I’m a bitch, I’m a girl, I’m a mother, I’m a whore...” What other roles does Julia Fox play that we might not know about? “Father?” she offers, laughing. For her, Valentino is her “grounding force,” as she raises him gently and with endless care. With her seemingly effortless adaptation to motherhood, it’s hard to not see Julia Fox as Mother. “It was like growing pains,” she confesses. “You’re kind of mourning your life and all the things you took for granted and didn’t appreciate in the moment, but then all these new amazing things pop up and you just adjust.” And this rings true for Julia, as her sense of purpose has only deepened with being a mother.

In the “Down the Drain” music video, Valentino features in a car seat, similar to how he is integrated into every facet of her life. I ask her what kind of world she would want Valentino to live in. “Definitely a world led by women,” she says with no hesitation. “Where women and children are protected and have their own communities that they can live in away from men because men commit like 98 percent of all violent crime.” She shares that there’s only one well known female serial killer and that if you look it up, she was abused by men her entire life, and so that’s why she killed men. “To me,” Fox says, “That’s a hero.”

With outside expectations and our own internal Furies closing in, Julia Fox remains true.We might behave as though we can outrun the natural progression of the Earth’s rotation, conquering our challenges more quickly than it takes to truly learn the lessons they offer. But why rush through the limited time we have? Why not embrace life’s impermanence? She contemplates, “I’m really at a place where I just want my work to speak for itself. I want the projects that I do to outlive me and outlast me, and I feel like that’s really how you leave your mark on the world. I’ve obviously had viral moments here and there, but I don’t really care about that.”

In this fight for survival, are we, in fact, fit enough to survive? Fox concludes, “You definitely have to have really, really thick skin to protect your soft insides. I’m from Manhattan. I didn’t go to a preppy private school, I did not have that soft cushiony life. I feel like I was just born hard, and things just roll off my back. I don’t really take anything too seriously. I’m a little self-deprecating. I think you have to be. You can’t think you’re the most important person in the room, because you’re not ever. I think humility is key.You never know what anyone else is going through. Your problems are not the most important problems.” 

Source: https://www.flaunt.com/post/julia-fox-close-encounters

Credits:

Photographed by Zee Nunes at Print and Contact

Styled by Christopher Campbell

Written by Bree Castillo

Hair: John Novotny at Opus Beauty

Makeup: Kauv Onazh at Opus Beauty

Nails: Daria Hardeman at Defacto

Set Designer: Shari Anlauf

Flaunt Film: Pierce Jackson and Tyler Rabin

Flaunt Film Editor: Isaac Dektor

Sound Design: Lucas Doya

Set Design Assistant: Jack Drazen

Stylist Assistants: Mia Hurley and Ellie Walborsky

Location: Corner Studio