At least part of the toil of working in digital publishing is the effort to manufacture headlines where there are none. Sometimes, it really is enough to say: this person looks good, and so why not pause a while on their photograph? Which leads us to Dakota Johnson, who last night walked the red carpet at the premiere of Splitsville–a new film in which she plays a gentle-natured ceramicist caught in the crossfires of an open marriage–in a strapless Gucci column made from crinkled, metal-effect leather.
The movie has been variously described as “riotous” and “exhausting,” two words that could just as feasibly be applied to any number of Johnson’s projects–Madame Web, Fifty Shades…the list goes on–but who cares? Johnson is a rare star in that she doesn’t need a film to burnish her image. She is the scion of Hollywood legends Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith–the latter of whom just so happened to join her on last night’s red carpet–and can transform even the most simple of clothes into paparazzi bait.
Consider the Mugler dress she wore to the Karlovy Vary film festival; the strapless Ferragamo number she chose to announce her ambassadorship with Roberto Coin; and the gossamer Nensi Dojaka midi she wore on Late Night With Seth Meyers. Johnson can wear the most minimal slip of a thing, because everything else about her does the work. “I’m not telling a story,” she not long ago told Vogue while slipping into another Gucci dress at the Cannes Film Festival. “I’m wearing a dress, and whatever story you wanna make up in your mind, that’s the right one.” Or, as her stylist Kate Young put it more plainly: “Dakota looks best in super simple dresses, because she’s so beautiful, her body’s so beautiful. It doesn’t require distraction.”