Look of the Week: Julia Fox outdoes herself in a dry-cleaning bag

By Jacqui Palumbo, CNN

(CNN) — Julia Fox’s press tour for her tell-all memoir “Down the Drain” has been in full swing this month, which means ample opportunity for the actor, model and newly christened author to go full on, well, Julia Fox.

It takes restraint to not dedicate our Look of the Week title to Fox nearly every week she’s out and about — she was one of the series’ inaugural looks for a pair of anxiety-inducing low slung pants and made another appearance when she went viral with slicked-back gray hair and bleached eyebrows. But fashion doesn’t only happen in a Julia Fox vacuum (though maybe it should), which has meant skipping other ensembles — a shower-curtain dress, a matching condom tube-top and boots combo, to name just a few — to play fair.

But on Tuesday, Fox stepped out in London in a look that can’t be overlooked: a literal plastic dry-cleaning bag, held up by a loop around her neck like a halter dress.

On the outside, the bag bears the name of Figura Services, an experimental label based in the UK. (The garment itself is straight from their Autumn-Winter 2023 runway, which was shown at London Fashion Week earlier this year.) Inside, a crisp white button-down is displayed on a wire hanger. Fox paired the garment bag with what appears to be elastic-waist shorts, J.Lo-worthy stiletto knee-high boots and a structured purse, all in cream.

It’s not the only time in the past month that Fox has played with garments that sit off the body or are layered out of order; last month, she sported a collared shirt and tie strapped to her chest on one outing, and high-cut frilly white underwear over a pair of low-cut white bloomers during another.

Fox’s press tour has been filled with avant garde looks that seem to touch upon different aspects of the book itself: channeling the time she spent working as a dominatrix in a studded and leather BDSM-ish dress, for example, or wearing an over-oversized blazer that would fit neatly in any lineup of 1980s or ’90s dustjacket portraits.

So what could a dry-cleaning bag symbolize? Since the bags tend to hold more luxe or delicate pieces, or those requiring special attention, maybe it represents a protective barrier, or a commentary on the projection of wealth — after all, she details in “Down the Drain” that, for many years, she had to look rich before she was.

It could also be worn in the spirit of a solvent-level cleanse — the effect that releasing a deeply personal memoir can have. Fox, after all, doesn’t hold back about the most difficult parts of her life in “Down the Drain,” including her past years of heroin use and her time in a psychiatric hospital. She’s airing her own laundry, but it’s not dirty.

Or — wait for it — perhaps it’s just Fox supporting a designer making out-there outfits that only she could pull off in earnest.

Whatever the reasoning behind Fox’s latest head-turning moment, it fits the old adage that a model could still look good in a brown paper bag. Designers have certainly played with elevating the mundane, with Balenciaga sending out models in garbage bags and Moschino making cleaning products camp, but Fox’s magnetic, playful choices put her at the top of her game. Who else is matching a prophylactic purse to her thigh-high boots without a hint of irony? Long may she reign.

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