Publishing is full of rankings, from power lists to best-dressed lists to under-40 lists. The CULT100 is different. There is just one criterion for inclusion—but it’s a high bar.

To qualify, a candidate must be actively shaping and changing our culture in real time. The people on this list represent five generations and hail from the worlds of food, publishing, art, fashion, activism, and entertainment. To put this group together, CULTURED‘s editors leveraged the full strength of our network, tapping artists, writers, and cultural leaders to tell us who they look to when they want to feel challenged, hopeful, and inspired.

Some members of the CULT100 are household names; others have been working behind the scenes to make possible the cultural encounters that stop us in our tracks. In a time of binary thinking, the creators featured in this year’s list are embracing contradiction, bouncing willfully between disciplines, and refusing to take no for an answer. They have guts, vision, and a potent cocktail of realism and optimism. None of them is shying away from the anxiety of our moment. Instead, they are thinking big, sharing generously, and embodying courage. The good news is, their work makes us all a little bit braver, too.

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Andrew Tess
Photography by Andrew Tess

Julia Fox

WRITER, ACTOR, AND ARTIST

WHAT IS YOUR CALLING CARD?

1-800-Save-a-Hoe.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?

Weird Barbie.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2024?

My TV show OMG Fashun is out on E! May 6. Movies, movies, movies, and maybe another book?

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, ALBUM, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Pedro Almodóvar films. My advisor in high school lent me a box set of all his films on DVD. They opened my eyes to a new world where the impossible is right at your fingertips and being strange and “interesting looking” is celebrated.

“I’m not a celebrity. I’m an artist who happened to get famous. That’s it.”

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU?

People think I’m dumb, but I’m actually really smart. At 16, I was testing at a college level. I’m actually a genius, and that’s a fact. I learned everything I know from experiencing life in the world, not in a classroom. I know a lot about history and geography and can find common ground with just about anyone from any walk of life. I’m a worldly woman, a Renaissance woman.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR?

I was always a hood celebrity. I was famous in the streets of New York even in middle school. I was the crazy white girl who didn’t have a curfew and was never scared of anything. It’s funny, because now I’m scared of everything.

DESCRIBE A RECENT CROSSROADS AT WHICH YOU FOUND YOURSELF.

Last year, I’d gotten all this fame all of a sudden and had to really reevaluate what I was going to do with it. I don’t want it to all be in vain. I want to make a difference. But mostly, I want the art to speak for itself. I’m not a celebrity. I’m an artist who happened to get famous. That’s it.

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ROSE BYRNE
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JULIANNE MOORE