Sometimes, when a celebrity shows off their house in Architectural Digest, they end up selling it. Or there’s a big change happening in their lives. Back in 2018, just before they announced their split, Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux’s home was featured in AD. As soon as their breakup was confirmed, there were reports that she was hoping to sell the house but there was no follow-up on that story. The same thing happened with Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber. But my point is, it’s always interesting to me when celebrities feature their homes in the magazine because, you know, privacy etc. That said, celebrities are also about ego. And there is nothing that boosts and ego like people admiring you for your home – and getting the AD signoff on your home: it means you have taste and style, and it’s something that celebrities share with civilians: non-famous people do this all the time, there’s a whole bragging culture around our homes. Instagram and Pinterest have made this democratic.
The latest celebrity to invite Architectural Digest into their home is Dakota Johnson. She calls it her “tree house” because there’s a lot of wood. It is, indeed, a beautiful house. Doesn’t look intimidatingly big but there’s a lot of space. And it’s exactly where you’d expect her to live – that is, the house matches up with what you might perceive her personality to be. I don’t think anyone who follows celebrity gossip would think that Dakota Johnson has the taste of Christian Grey, right? It’s not all sleek and modern. Like of course Dakota has rugs. Of course the couch is vintage. Of course there’s a lot of vinyl.
In addition to photographs, there’s also a ten minute video of Dakota touring AD through the house. I laughed when she came to the bookshelf in her office and there’s a pile of books there and she was embarrassed to show them and put them away. Because my friends and I just had this text conversation a few weeks ago when we were creeping footage of someone’s home that they posted on social media. Duana and I are the kind of people to immediately two finger zoom on the books and their titles. I don’t give a sh-t about anything else – my eyes go first to the books to see what they’re reading. So I get why Dakota would be sheepish about certain titles. But the other side of that is that you can swing way in the other direction on pretentiousness. Like if you’re posing the David Foster Wallace to where the eyes go first on your bookcase, I’m coming to some conclusions, unless you’re balancing that out with some young adult fiction. Anyway, the takeaway here is that Dakota is embarrassed about some of her books – and now I’m wondering what kind of reading she’s embarrassed by. Typically we associate book-embarrassment to women’s writing, like romance, books by women for women. And it’s bullsh-t. Hopefully Dakota isn’t about that sh-t. After all, she was in Fifty Shades of Grey. Maybe the book she’s embarrassed about having is Sean Penn’s.
Later on, Dakota takes AD out to the backyard, where she has bamboo growing close to where her property borders her neighbour. What’s intriguing here is that she reveals that she and her neighbour have issues over the bamboo – they evidently think there’s too much of it. Neighbour fights over trees and property lines can get DIRTY. And it didn’t seem, at least not to me, like she was joking. One of her neighbours is Jimmy Kimmel. She was on Kimmel a few years ago and he told this story about how she confronted one of their other neighbours about towing her grandfather’s truck so she doesn’t mess around when it comes to neighbour drama. You can watch that here:
So, yeah, clearly she doesn’t give a sh-t about calling out neighbours. Or, you know, she wants to sell.
Click here to see photos of Dakota’s house and to watch the video. Attached – Dakota out in LA yesterday.
