Dakota Johnson is not like other celebrities. On late night television, she comes across as sardonic and smart and unpredictable, as if she is secretly conspiring with all the regular folk in the audience. The daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, I imagine she spent her childhood flitting between film studios and glamorous dinner parties, making well-timed, withering remarks at all the toupés and the optic-white veneers that get normalised in Hollywood circles. Perhaps that’s why Johnson seems so blasé about maintaining Los Angeles pleasantries, she can see the funny side to all this nonsense. “Aren’t you supposed to let people talk on this show?” And then, of course, there is the much-memed smirk: “That’s not the truth, Ellen”.

How To Dress Like Dakota Johnson For Autumn

Her comments about getting dressed are just as deadpan. “I’m not telling a story,” she told while slipping into a fringed Gucci gown for the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. “I’m wearing a dress, and whatever story you wanna make up in your mind, that’s the right one.” Fair enough. Johnson knows she could wear almost anything and still make headlines, because everything else about her does the work. Or, as her stylist Kate Young once put it: “Dakota looks best in super simple dresses, because she’s so beautiful, her body’s so beautiful. It doesn’t require distraction.” This knowing awkwardness (combined with a bohemian fringe that belongs to some kind of How To Be A French Girl manual), has made Johnson a people’s favourite. It’s also led to Gucci and Valentino ambassadorships and co-signs from Chanel and Stella McCartney and Dior and Schiaparelli.

Kicking off her red carpet career in a ’00s baker boy cap at Disney premieres, Dakota Johnson is, two decades later, a regular feature on street style inspiration boards and always best dressed on the step and repeat. With an impressive list of IMDb credits under her belt, she isn’t going anywhere, and her most recent project, , opens this weekend. A spooky turn for the star, it sees Johnson play opposite Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett in Michael Showalter’s adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s thriller, as a struggling writer trapped in a psychological thriller full of beautiful interiors and immaculate haircuts.

As the actress turns 37, we travel back over some of Dakota Johnson's best moments in fashion.