New York DOLL

A chameleonic presence on the runway and stage and in this summer's Barbie-HARI NEF embodies a subversive glamour that is wholly her own

- Laura Regensdorf

THE PANTHEON OF It girls isn’t driven by the mere spectacle of dressing up. “They simply do because they must,” Hari Nef says on a crisp Sunday in Lower Manhattan. “Whether it’s Edie or Parker or Chloë,” meaning Sedgwick, Posey, and Sevigny, “or Dianne Brill or RuPaul.” Eternal icons all—still, word on the street is that many actors cling to a very set image: “They don’t want to wear wigs, take risks with makeup. I don’t relate to that.” Character play confers a certain freedom. “I can get naked behind that,” adds Nef.

Eight years after her runway debut helped ink a headline-making IMG contract, the spring 2023 collections saw the actor back on the circuit, this time with an unmissable copper bob. She served retro kink at Batsheva (PVC dress, aqua cat eye), outré glamour at Jason Wu (grungy hair, curve-hugging gown), courtier punk at Matty Bovan (corset, jagged black wig). “It’s this comfort in the chameleon,” Nef says of the season’s guises, beginning with Collina Strada’s Look 1 plaid pants and “Got Milkweed?” slip dress. It’s a nod to the runway location: a Brooklyn butterfly preserve, where the plant is an essential food source for monarch caterpillars. “I wanted her to open [the show] because I felt like the actress in her could really embrace the butterfly energy that we were going for,” says Collina Strada creative director Hillary Taymour. “And she really just set a tone in such a beautiful, striking way.”