Last year, Emma Thompson and Gillian Anderson declared summer 2021 a summer of no underwear, gleefully shouting their anti-underwear sentiments for the world to hear ahead of the Hot Vaxx Summer that kind of wasn’t. A year later, Julia Fox is ushering in the season with an opposite, yet equally provocative sartorial choice: underwear only.
Fox — who has dominated headlines in recent months for briefly dating Kanye West and rocking unconventional ensembles that often involve heavy eyeliner and inordinate amounts of denim — was photographed leaving an LA grocery store in underwear and a denim jacket on Sunday, attracting the kind of media attention only a Julia Fox outfit can. The unorthodox shopping attire — which, according to E! News, consisted of a matching Alexander Wang bra and panty set with an oversize denim jacket and heeled denim boots — quickly became the subject of countless headlines, tweets and memes, cementing the underwear-chic style as the aesthetic of the summer.
Responding to one meme comparing Fox’s ensemble to “laundry day” attire, Fox took to Instagram defend her PDU (public display of underwear). “I just think if it’s socially acceptable at the beach it should be the same everywhere lol,” Fox wrote on her Instagram story. (Note the use of “lol”-as-punctuation.)
Frankly, she’s got a point. (Also, it occurs to me that wearing beach attire to a grocery store is kind of the entire plot of a certain John Updike story, so maybe this whole thing is actually an elaborate homage to “A&P”.) If we can be nearly nude in public at the beach, what’s stopping us from wearing designer underwear while we stock up on groceries, or throwing on a pair of boxers to go grab a coffee? That said, this is also the inverse of the same argument aggressively prude men have been known to use to shame and harass women for wearing bathing suits at the beach, so I guess we have to be careful with that one.
Personally, however, as someone who believes people should feel free to wear whatever the hell they want whenever the hell they want to, I have nothing but respect for Fox’s apocalypse-ready, underwear-chic aesthetic. May we all embrace this spirit of chaos and exposure this summer. Wear your bikini to the bank. Wear your underwear to the grocery store. Cut a crotch hole in your jumpsuit. Everything is denim and nothing matters!
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