Influenced by Julia Fox

"I just noticed a big line of drool on my T-shirt," Julia Fox says, looking down at her black hoodie with a jeweled United States flag patch on the front.... and, yes, there is a silver dog spit stripe matching her blue jeans and Telfar denim Uggs. She dozed off and only had time to take a walk with her St. Bernard before we met, early morning in Manhattan. "Oh well, what can you do," she shrugged.

But what she was doing was a tough promotional tour - national daytime TV shows and newspaper profiles, along with New York Fashion Week, ad campaigns and brand contracts. And she just finished describing her strange, drastically changing''s life vibe in her memoir, Down the Toilet. We chat today in a hidden corner of the studio where she's preparing to shoot her first Cosmopolitan magazine cover.

"I'm an artist starring .... me," Julia writes in her candid, honest look at life, where almost every action can make a headline or become a meme. Life, I quickly realized while reading, was a story of relationship violence, overdoses, arrests, hospitalizations, and the tragic death of a friend in 2019 that prompted her to quit using drugs. This is the story of a woman fighting for her own narrative.

The extent to which Julia's fame has developed and exploded in the public's consciousness varies depending on who you talk to. For many, she is a viral icon, her name always''appears in the news feed because of what she says, wears or does that day. But for others? They may only know her for her very short-lived, media-furore-inducing relationship with Kanye West (which she describes as "the most uninteresting thing about me") or for herdisheveled image in the 2019 film Unshelved Jewels alongside Adam Sandler. And also for those three sophisticated syllables that have been hanging out constantly in the minds of the entire internet for about a year.... "Anka Gumz."

Whatever your knowledge of her, it's clear that while Julia may say she never sought fame, fame always found her. Over the years she has experienced many different situations. She's been the party girl, the underground couple, the domina, the sugar baby,''Fashion designer, model, provocative artist (who once held her own funeral), actress, producer, OMG Fashun fashion contest host (from the Queer Eye team) and now author. Trying to clearly summarize her life and career thus far is not easy, and that's part of her magic.

With so much material, it's no wonder she describes the writing process as "quite agonizing," dodging editor's calls and putting off work. Recall the red carpet at Vanity Fair's Oscars 2022 party where Julia, with black eyeliner, told an interviewer that her book was already a "masterpiece." It was more of a manifestation than anything real - because Julia hadn't even started writing. "Not a single word," she says. "After''Photos sought by her lead parents as she pranced around town with friends, rarely returning home. "I was always very aware that I was raised the wrong way," she says, recalling her years of transition. Her tumultuous childhood led her to be born in Milan to an Italian mother and American father, and at an early age she moved from her grandfather's house in Saronno, Italy, on her father's boat, in squats and in houses he renovated in New York City. "In a way, my parents were successful in raising me to raise myself," she notes. - "They were the obstacles I overcame, with my head up, with good jobs. Maybe if they hadn't left me to my own devices, I wouldn't have become so strong, resilient,''"independent, intelligent, defensive. At 15, she returned to New York and moved in with her boyfriend, a drug dealer. She was banned from Bloomingdale's for stealing (years later she would reappear at the same department store for its ad campaign) and became a domina, responding to an ad on Craigslist. She went through an increasingly dark relationship entangled with violence and drug addiction. She prayed and got a sugar daddy. Her young life was full of raunchy and glamorous parties, many losses, and a great heist.

"My first encounters with men are hard to remember, It's all the same," Julia says, answering each of my questions with shocked eyes. "I look back like - ew, disgusting, disgusting, disgusting, pedophile. Now I''her. Professionally, she likes to "always have her tentacles in different areas - six or seven projects at a time," and she dreams of becoming a writer and producer. But she is also embraced and emulated by the fashion world. "I see myself on the catwalks - a lot of designers have me in their moods," she says with a wicked grin. She has a charming, witty confidence. At a Cosmopolitan magazine shoot, the crew is amazed at how quickly she can strike a pose, changing from one voluminous red two-piece outfit to a sculptural white dress reminiscent of an alien bride and then into high fur raver boots. "I've tried this before," she points to the collared dress, "I look amazing in it." On Julia's 5' tall figure'Foot 3 inches it presses, but she never loses her feline posture, moving from one killer pose to the next.

Obviously, when there's a camera around, she knows what to do - and when to take control. A viral video of her interaction with one paparazzo on the street last year showed Julia asking him not to take pictures of her with her son and offering a scheduled time to shoot with her at a later date. She understands that celebrity fame is entertainment and service to the masses - and the iconic shots of her grocery shopping in her underwear say a lot with very few words.

She was recently photographed walking around New York in a silver corset, and has become the subject of discussion with her performances in latex, skin-tight leather''Wet glitter, jeans of her own design, and even a dress made of fall leaves. She's made low-slung pants her trademark, and helped recapture 2000s fashion trends for all of us, gulp - and has worn unusual accessories like a clutch made from human hair. "People get so angry at my outfits," she says. - "The reaction is much crazier than the outfit itself!"

But while the dynamics of tabloid celebrities and power exchanges with the paparazzi have been going on for decades, what Julia is doing is using her relationship with that world as a catalyst for change. Our conversation moves from photoshop and paparazzi to romance and the power dynamics of relationships; a variety of topics that her 1.7 million TikTok followers will''good to know.

Discussing the reaction to her appearance, she leans forward as if about to hit her with a hammer and speaks in a sarcastic, shrill manner. "It really shows that even women want other women to keep their builds in line," she says. - Close up, put on modest clothes, dim the lights. A woman's body should be celebrated and should not be seen only as a sexual object. Everyone who gets mad at me for showing a lot of skin has labeled me a sexual being. But I am so much more than that - and sex is the last thing I do with this body. I'm proud of my body. Why shouldn't I wear something revealing, really cool and artistic?

'They used to confuse me,' she says, frowning. - "It used to be a sanctuary - I could rest there. Now I'm not really inclined to share my life there. I'm not a blogger, you know - I think I'm an influencer, but I'm not a blogger. I needed to stop myself and let my work speak for itself." She reflects on how much she thinks about what oil to pour on the social media fire or conserving her core energy. "I wish I could say I pre-programmed my viral moments, but no," she says. - "I don't think that way intellectually. I think it just happened." She also had to''face relentless online bullying. "I've been bullied online since the dawn of the internet," she says. She tells the story of an ex who created an Instagram profile from her pictures in a domina and subscribed to all her friends and family. "But what used to feel like a jolt to my stomach now feels like wind in my hair. I've developed a thick skin ... regardless of the million people trying to tell me when they're mad at me about something on the internet. But at the end of the day, I know who I am. I've been through too much for it to affect me.".

To reclaim her story for a world hungry to think it knows and defines "Julia Fox" is an important goal. "I didn't fully realize how misogynistic society was until I became''famous,' she says, leaning back in her chair. - "They just take everything away from you." With her image, she rebels against this. Her day-to-day lifestyle fits the comfortable sweatshirt and jeans she wears when I meet her-"it fits my life now, which involves a lot of manual labor." But when she's not just carrying herself, she wants to separate her outfits for going on the runway and to parties. "The duplicity of being a woman," she says with a smart smile. "I like to have fun and be crazy. That's why I love independent designers who step outside the box. "

She dyed her roots gray as a '\'dedication'\' to aging and bleached her eyebrows by legendary makeup artist Pat McGrath. "[We're seeing] more and more women,'Who really settle for the other woman's gaze, instead of liking the male gaze. Because women are so enraptured by a highlighted eyebrow on another woman, from my observations, the male brain is can't process. This represents a culture change where we are starting to have fun with the way we look again. "

But she believes society is not yet ready to allow women to live outside of the boring male gaze, or the name of the man so often attributed to her after her two-month relationship with Kanye West, much more over her world controlling rapper and his crew.

"I'm constantly resisting being defined by that," she says. - "Most of the time when I'm in the media, next to my name''stands his name. It annoys me - in the overall scheme of things in my life, it was a blink of an eye. It doesn't mean I don't love him, I just don't love it. I've had a lot of accomplishments, before and after him." She claims that he suggested she get plastic surgery on her breasts, that she turned him down and that she was offended. He didn't like her and he changed the way she dressed. The incessant showy nature of the relationship and manipulation was the reason she finally ended it. "He used me as a weapon. "

"Women are so often defined by their relationships with men," she continues. - "What I dream of is a mass uprising, but that would be dangerous for us women." She is well aware of the negative stereotypes imposed on women. "Society loves the idea of the 'unreliable woman' -'' A 'little dictator' who keeps her life under control. "I have a very demanding child," she says. - "The child I deserve, absolutely. He's my linchpin. For him, I'm stable and reliable ... I have to save a lot of my energy for my child, so I often say no to other things. I can feel like such an asshole, but I choose me and my son. No will never regret not flying to Paris to do an ad campaign to spend time [with him]. I don't want him to ever feel what I felt - like an orphan.".

Julia became pregnant when her marriage was on the brink of divorce - she decided to continue the pregnancy because the estimated birth date coincided with the recently deceased''friend. That friend's spirit helped her through the more difficult moments of pregnancy and motherhood, including her struggle with postpartum depression. "When breastfeeding wasn't working for me, I felt ineffective, like an unrealistic woman - isn't that crazy? I felt very alone when I was pumping such a small amount of milk at all hours of the day and night. I had very dark thoughts. I thought things like, "If this was caveman time and there was no formula, what would I do? Is it natural selection?" But it was the formula that was the best thing for him - he was getting vitamins that I couldn't give him. I wasn't good at the time." Now she doesn't have the energy for dating - without c