“So,” says Dakota Johnson, upon realizing that our conversation is being recorded, “I shouldn’t say anything naughty?” Throughout our time together, it can, in places, be difficult to decipher what the 36-year-old actress is getting at, because almost every answer is preceded by a pause, and followed by a giggle.
What soon becomes clear, however, is that Dakota Johnson has lived her entire life with a heightened sensory awareness. “When I was little, I was very aware of how fabrics felt on my body,” she says. “I loved the way my mother dressed, so I wanted to wear jeans, but I had to wear tights underneath, because I didn’t like how denim felt on my skin.” She’d pair them with Mary-Janes—“because The Wizard of Oz”—and a flower-embroidered mesh vest she thought was “pretty rad,” and because her mother, Melanie Griffith, wore sunglasses, she did too. “I looked like an insane person.”
Photo: Pip Bourdillon
That sensitivity has followed her into adulthood. “I say to Kate [Young, her stylist]: no turtlenecks, no mohair,” she adds. “It gets stuck in my mouth.” In fact, it was the absence of fabric altogether that drew her to the look she wore to Alessandro Michele’s spring 2026 Haute Couture presentation for Valentino: a feather-cuffed, boxy-shouldered, matelassé shrug over a pussy-bow leopard-print blouse, tucked into lace micro-shorts, with floral-embroidered tights, and metal-tipped, ankle-strapped, pin-thin-heeled Rockstud—these are, Devil Wears Prada or not, going to be a thing once more—pumps. “No pants feel like home to me,” she says, her team erupting in another fit of laughter again. “And Alessandro is one of the great loves of my life. I love following his creative genius and I love watching his mind and heart work and I just feel honored to be on this journey with him.”