Notes on #FoxYe: A New Era of Celebrity, Influence, and Luxury

If you’ve been on socials the past few weeks, whether it’s Twitter, TikTok, or Instagram, chances are you’ve been seeing a string of chaotic cultural moments. We’ve got an Elmo renaissance, with clips of the puppet’s New York accent popping up everywhere. Twitter is awash with scene-by-scene analyses of Euphoria season 2, intermixed with Wordle squares. And as Fashion Week approaches, there’s a flurry of fits going off on Instagram. But more than anything else, our attention has been arrested by the relationship between actress Julia Fox and the artist formerly known as Kanye West.

There are, unsurprisingly, already a plethora of thinkpieces about the couple and even an IG dedicated to updates on their relationship (@foxye.news). Rather than add to the thinkpieces, I wanted to jot down some fragmented thoughts on FoxYe and what their relationship means at this cultural flashpoint.

1. I know some people think FoxYe is PR, a performance rather than reality. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. I’m not here to say with definitive confidence what it is, only that I am enthralled.
2. I do love a good piece of performance art, though. Marina Abramović, Coco Fusco, and Ana Mendieta all added to our cultural landscape in a spectacular way, and FoxYe feels like it’s inheriting that tradition, regardless of how ‘real’ or ‘unreal’ it is.
3. Rachel Tashjian describes Ye’s continuous wearing of Balenciaga as “complete devotion to an uncompromising aesthetic”.  So it’s no surprise that Balenciaga and Yeezy Gap outfit the entirety of Ye’s latest music video; in turn, the video becomes a piece of fashion art. We’ve talked about this before, but this is more than just fashion entertainment: it marks a new era for luxury fashion collaborations. Forget Fendace or Fenskims or even Balengucci. Forget about high-low collabs, too. Ye and Balenciaga’s Demna are rewriting the script for collaborations, transcending mediums to create a seamless branded universe, a creative playground that builds tangible & intangible artistic forms.
4. Speaking of Ye and Demna and Balenciaga: using your burgeoning relationship with a rising actress to promote your newest endeavor — Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga — is essentially influence marketing in hyperdrive.
5. FoxYe is a fascinating mix of fashion, romance, and allure, but what makes the whole relationship so intriguing to me is the enigmatic figure of Julia Fox. An artist in her own right, she self-published photobooks and put on a gallery show called RIP JULIA FOX, exhibiting silk paintings made with her own blood. Her previous work is vulnerable and raw, and now we’re seeing a different side of her through digital visual diaries, where she documents her dates with Ye. It’s slowly becoming a series on Interview: the first visual diary documents her second date with Ye and the second diary details another date night, this one featuring Madonna. This might be a controversial take, but I think Fox’s diaries crackle with a Nan Goldin-like energy.
6. The date night diaries also show that the IG boyfriend is out and the art director boyfriend is in.
7. In a few of the shots from Ye and Julia’s New York date, you can see iconoclast playwright and actor Jeremy O. Harris in the background. He plays a hilariously heavy role in FoxYe: the pair watched Zola the second time they were together and then flew to New York to watch Slave Play. Harris is inspiring artistic chaos and you absolutely love to see it.

    

8. As an agency, we often talk about being storytellers, weaving narratives that champion radical humanity and value the vulnerable & real. When we do influencer work, that’s exactly what we look for; it’s part of our casting filter. Because a picture can say one thing or mean 1,000 words, but it’s the full, lived life around the photo that tells the holistic story, the investment in the person. So if FoxYe is indeed a marketing stunt, then it’s the capitulation of that kind of storytelling come to life. Why be bound to a platform, a static post, or a 30-second video? FoxYe is a living and breathing story constantly being shared, making up a branded world of its own. That’s beyond influence.
9. ‘Authenticity’ and ‘relatability’ have become, to me, boring words. Or rather, they inspire boring content. I want celebrity to feel inaccessible and unrelatable again. I want to observe people who are so removed from my everyday reality that just watching them feels like escapism. That’s why I’m so invested in FoxYe. Whether it’s a performance or not, watching someone scour through racks of gifted designer clothing on a second date is so beyond what would happen to most people that it serves as a reminder that celebrities are absolutely not the same as us. And that’s fine! Emma Garland at Dazed, agrees when she writes: from celebrities, “we need charisma, mythology, narrative.”
10. This desire for reinvigorated celebrity calls to mind the philosophical classic, Society of the Spectacle. Guy Debord went off when he said, “Celebrities exist to act out various styles of living and viewing society — unfettered, free to express themselves globally.” I mean, he was critiquing celebrity culture overall but this particular quote still stands.

How long FoxYe will last is not especially interesting to me. Whether it’s through Q1 or longer, what’s compelling is that at this moment, their relationship perfectly encapsulates a distinct cultural sensibility, where we can see the changing natures of celebrity, luxury fashion, and marketing unfold before our eyes in almost real-time. I’m going to keep gleefully observing it for as long as it goes on.

If you want to chat FoxYe, celebrity, or the changing nature of influence with us, drop us a line!

With love & admiration,

Brenda