Jennifer Lawrence is one among the most generally admired and effectively accoladed actors on the planet: she was the world’s highest-paid lady in Hollywood in 2015, and has 4 Oscar nominations and one win (all earlier than the age of 26). She is a real film star in an period when social media virality appears to eclipse generational endurance.
But a fashion icon? That’s a new one.
“I’ve never looked at J. Law and thought, ‘You’re a fashion girl,’” stated Marie Claire editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike. “Nothing about her red carpet (clothing) has ever made me say, ‘Yes, this woman cares about fashion. She cares about what she’s wearing.’”
But now, Ogunnaike noticed, “Somehow her streetstyle has turned her into an icon.”
Over the previous few months, as Lawrence promotes her Oscar hopeful “Die, My Love,” her pink carpet ensembles, and particularly her paparazzi-enshrined streetstyle, have spurred numerous primers to her wardrobe on Substack and in journal buying roundups. The Cut praised her postpartum appears to be like, and Harper’s Bazaar celebrated her “perceived effortlessness” in combining oversize tailoring with “quirky accessories.”
On Substack, the place shoppable guides to improved day by day dressing are a cottage business, writers have seized on her relatability: “Jennifer Lawrence Is Dressing How I Think I Dress,” wrote one Substacker, whereas one other stated Lawrence was main the method in reviving the improvisational appeal of celebrity dressing that has dissipated amid model offers and tremendous stylists. In the buying digest Magasin, the place founder Laura Reilly steers readers in direction of a hyper-refined breed of minimalism, the fashion was topped “Coldwater Creek chic.”
Lawrence, who has labored with stylist Jamie Mizrahi (who additionally works with Lawrence’s pal Adele, plus Riley Keough, Jeremy Allen White and Pedro Pascal) since 2023, doesn’t look notably distinctive: she wears monitor pants with oversize sweaters, or a leopard print coat over a sweatsuit, or a free slip skirt beneath a huge T-shirt with a classic Fendi bag.
But that’s simply why so many ladies are drawn to it, stated Erika Veurink, who writes the Substack Long Live. Veurink wrote a treatise on getting the Lawrence look that has been broadly shared – particularly, she stated, by postpartum moms. (Lawrence gave start to her second little one earlier this yr.) She stated Lawrence’s fashion captures exactly what number of ladies need to look on this second. “I wouldn’t say classic or timeless. It’s very ‘right now,’” she stated. But it doesn’t seem troublesome to tug off or replicate.
“She’s a very thin woman,” Veurink acknowledged, “but I think there’s so much fatigue around celebrity outfits where it’s like, ‘Congrats, you took Ozempic and now you’re a zero, and you can wear Tom Ford anything.’ There is an everywoman feeling to these loose clothing items that are a little nondescript.”
“It’s aspirational, but it’s not completely out of reach,” stated Ogunnaike.
Of course, there’s extra to Lawrence’s low-key makeover than meets the eye.
Over a decade in the past, Lawrence’s celeb was solidified as the final Hollywood cool lady: her relatability, embarrassing screwups and perceived humility made her a popular culture sweetheart. In a series of essays, author Anne Helen Petersen compared Lawrence to the antihero of Gillian Flynn’s thriller “Gone Girl,” who’s outlined in what’s turn into an iconic passage:
“Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot.”
Lawrence turned a Dior ambassador in 2012, round the time designer Raf Simons took over the model’s womenswear, which added to that cool lady fame: she tripped over her robe hems – twice! – and yukked it up on pink carpets in Simons’s unusual however pure designs. I’m simply the sizzling goofball in the zillion greenback couture robe, her fashion appeared to say.
As she returns to the highlight, Lawrence has spoken at size about, if not abandoning that persona, then downplaying it. She remains to be self-deprecating and free – she told the New Yorker about getting a breast augmentation, then stated she hasn’t gotten the deep plane facelift fashionable amongst celebrities however, “believe me, I’m gonna!” But she is usually accompanied by a publicist, somewhat than plunking down with a reporter and demanding a beer and fries. She describes her former interviews as “cringe,” and the individual she sees in these interviews from a decade in the past as “annoying.”
Now she appears to have been enveloped in one other cool lady persona. On social media, this period’s cool lady is outlined not by males however by ladies: an elusive determine drenched in the minimalist mythology of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and tastemakers like Lauren Santo Domingo, drawn to cashmere sweaters and Elsa Peretti jewellery and massive beige gown coats. Incidentally, right now’s cool lady isn’t essentially identified for speaking; scant interviews with Bessette Kennedy even exist. All over Substack are cool lady guides – to Valentine’s Day, to easy fashion, to brooches, to fall, to burnout and stress. (Glad to know there’s a stylish technique to crash out!)
Lawrence has worn a variety of items coveted by such ladies: High Sport pants, Yaser Shaw scarves, uncommon coats by The Row, Rothys clogs, and Paloma Wool skirt-pants. “Her clothing is a lot of the same clothing that all of these women are already wearing,” stated Ogunnaike. “It’s like, ‘You, the celebrity, are confirming that my style is good.’”
Is it a entice, or liberation? Ogunnaike sees it as the latter. “She’s gone through the Hollywood cycle where, maybe she’s not getting to show her true personality in the way that she did when she was a little younger, and she was tripping up the steps and that sort of thing. It seems like her fashion is reflecting the fun, kooky side of her a bit more,” she stated. In different phrases, like Princess Diana or Bessette Kennedy, the garments present the character that Lawrence now prefers to maintain extra to herself.
And the shift can also mirror her priorities as a performer. She talks about herself as an artist, somewhat than a celeb. In the years since the peak of her fame, has married a gallerist and had two youngsters, which has additionally helped her craft a extra non-public life and fame. “It’s a very grown-up style. These are outfits you would wear to a parent-teacher conference or a 5:30 drink with a friend,” stated Veurink. “It’s not the Sabrina Carpenter pop star girly thing.”