Dakota Johnson has spent the past couple of months in the UK, morphing–much like Zendaya and Taylor Russell–into the archetypal west London girl. There have been trips to hair removal clinics in Notting Hill, open-air concerts in Hyde Park, and late-night trips to the West End. (A sentence that was not but does sound as though it could have been plucked from the Taylor Swift songbook.)
The actress was yesterday evening photographed leaving the Noël Coward Theatre–where Jeremy O’Harris’s Slave Play is currently being staged–in a Chanel jacket, tailored suit trousers and some practical Nike V2K running trainers. She looked like any other 34-year-old on the commute, although Johnson is one woman who is unlikely to have ever experienced the thrills of the MTA system.
Those comfortable dad sneakers are perhaps the antidote to all the Adidas Sambas, Salomons, Onitsuka Tigers, and Puma Speedcats that have begun to proliferate in most metropolitan centers. These are anti-It shoes–functioning only as a sturdy and sensible scaffolding to an outfit–that suggest a person does not care about being perceived as fashionable or even on-trend, which is, of course, the most fashionable thing of all.