Many of my days start the same. To paraphrase You’ve Got Mail, I turn on my computer. I wait impatiently as it boots up. I go online, and my breath catches in my chest until I read three little words: Dakota Johnson’s kitchen. Unveiled in an instantly viral video for Architectural Digest in March 2020, the Suspiria star’s kitchen is the Garden of Eden without the preachiness. It’s a daydream. A mood. An olive-green utopia, presumably designed by an angel. I want to dive into it, eat it, squat in its cabinets like the world’s luckiest hobo.
By now, Johnson’s Architectural Digest video has ceased being a meme. No one is talking about her professing her love of limes any more. Nor the scandal (not really) that emerged when Johnson confessed she didn’t actually love limes: they had been put there by an AD set decorator. She reportedly no longer even lives in the house in question. Were the miserable reviews for her new Netflix movie Persuasion some kind of karmic retribution for moving out of it last year? Who can say? Regardless of the video’s age, though, it continues to draw me back. It’s had more than 23 million views since its release; I must surely be responsible for at least two thirds of them.
