Julia Fox has mastered the art of headline-generating, divisive beauty looks. Nine months after her breakup with Ye, aka Kanye West, Fox is finally on the receiving end of some positive press. Appearing on the CFDA red carpet, she rocked her usual smeared-asphalt smokey eye and wet-look hair, with a half-head of sprayed-on greys, paired with a typically subdued Valerievi Milano cut-out dress.
Asked about the look, Julia told the media it was “a love letter to getting older,” describing the hair as #GRANNYGLAM. A few hours later, her interview on Emily Ratajkowski’s High Low With Emrata podcast hit the internet. She talked frankly about defending Amber Heard (“none of us are safe”), trying not to raise an entitled man as a single mother (“how the hell do we avoid that?”), and how dating Ye impacted her career (badly).
Relatable, nice, frank, and feminist, we (and the rest of the internet) are suddenly asking ourselves: Is Julia Fox the capital-K Kween of our hearts?
If her beauty looks are anything to go by, then yes, we’ve done a full 180.
During the year of the “boring manicure” and glazed everything skin, Julia’s attitude and borderline terrifying beauty looks have been kind of refreshing, and now, she’s won us over for good. Join us, as we take a walk through her best beauty moments.
Julia Fox’s Best Beauty Moments: A Revisionist History
The “Fox” Eye: The Beginning
Our suspicion that we loved Julia first began on March 17th, when she answered the many, many questions about we had about her beauty looks. From the exfoliating iS Clinical Active Serum ($143) as a primer, to violently scrubbed in Giorgio Armani, Luminous Silk Foundation ($105) — not taken down the neck because “it’s not that serious” — to her now-iconic, signature “Fox eye”, chaotically mapped it out with Pat McGrath black powder, this tutorial answered so many of our burning questions and gave us our first taste of Julia Fox: awkward, oddly relatable beauty enthusiast.
“Julia Fox Will Come For You”: The New York Times
Hard, sharp and ready to kill, Fox’s slicked braid, which was created by Ezio Diaferia for the cover of The New York Times looked as hard and sharp as a scorpion shell. Alien-esque enough to have Sigourney Weaver reaching for her pulse rifle, the hair look was everything we love about the Julia Fox approach to beauty: aggressive, unnerving and original.
Where the Wild Things Are: Halloween 2022
For Halloween, Fox and friends chose children’s book Where the Wild Things Are as a suitably impish inspiration when they attended Heidi Klum’s Halloween 2022 party, aka Worm Gate. Fox’s horned look featured a blurred burgundy lip, Picasso-esque swirls and long, felt and pleather nails.
Washed Up: Diesel SS23
At some point this year, Fox switched the raggedy “Fox eye” for painterly, symmetrical, negative space swirls. Based on her tutorial, we know Julia herself doesn’t have the patience or attention to detail to DIY the super-symmetrical negative space liner look she wore to the Diesel Milann Spring 2023 show. Instead, she turned to the professionals, enlisting MUA Luca Cianciolo for the beauty look, with Ezio Diaferia back for her chic, sea witch mane. Colour us obsessed.
Black-Swan-Goes-to-Berghain: High Snobiety
Hyper thin brows and slightly-seedy Manic-Panic-burgundy hair (you just know it would stain your pillow post-wash) and taped eyes, Julia Fox slayed in a Black Swan-inspired beauty look that, according to Highsnobiety journalist Alex Frank, took a “makeup artist named Kennedy” an hour to create. One thing we love about Fox? As a beauty fan, she always tags hair, nails and makeup. The MUA was Kali Kennedy, and the look slayed.
Post-Party Girl: ZEIT ONLINE
This was one for The Cut‘s “Party Girls”, or anyone who knows the feeling of having an amazing night, pulling an amazing look, then having to wander home in the rude light of day, bubblegum pink belt-dress chafing on the bus, wondering if your friends got enough candid photos of you to justify the experience. Bleak, depressive and in wobbly pencilled-on brows, this cover for ZEIT Online also captured Fox at her viscerally relatable best.
Silver “Kween”
TBH, after close to a full calendar year of sighing at Julia Fox’s smokey eyes, skinny brow promotion and forever imperfectly colour-matched foundations, we’re just loving this look. It’s a new vibe, and the hazy reverse smokey eye, perfectly blurred with her invisi-brows, sculpted but soft blush and glassy lips (is that Lancôme Juicy Tube in Marshmallow Electro?) work perfectly with her statement silver hair and belly-baring statement dress.
Combined with her feminist comments about ageing? It is starting to seem like she’s been in our corner this whole time, so maybe it’s time we got in hers.
