At London Fashion Week, the honor of the final look at the Burberry show didn’t go to a runway legend like Naomi Campbell, Agyness Deyn or Lily Donaldson, all of whom walked in the show. Instead, Maya Wigram, wearing a belted leather field jacket and billowing maxi-kilt, took the lap most models would kill for in her modeling debut.
Sorry. Maya who? Maya Wigram, the daughter of the much fetishized fashion designer Phoebe Philo, who recently started her own fashion label.
Fashion’s fixation with celebrity scions is not new. Gigi and Bella Hadid, Kendall Jenner and Kaia Gerber — many of the world’s current batch of successful models were born to the rich and famous. (In the case of Ms. Gerber, whose mother is Cindy Crawford, it helps to have a bona fide supermodel to thank for her genes.)
Nepo babies can, in theory, go into any profession. The nepotism doesn’t restrict them to the profession of their parents. It just means they had famous, successful family ties (or well-known last names) that helped them get ahead in their chosen field.
New York magazine may have declared 2022 as “the year of the nepo baby,” but the trend of luxury brands hiring youngsters who are yet to achieve much professionally, but do happen to be sons and daughters of A-listers, is not abating. If anything, it has been gaining momentum.
Scarlet Stallone, a daughter of Sylvester Stallone, walked her first runway for Tommy Hilfiger during New York Fashion Week. Deva Cassel, a daughter of Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel, modeled for Alberta Ferretti in Milan. Iris Law, whose parents are Jude Law and Sadie Frost, is the current face of Burberry. She is also a new Victoria’s Secret recruit alongside Lila Moss, daughter of Kate.
And one of the most booked models of the moment is Amelia Gray Hamlin, a daughter of Lisa Rinna of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.” She has been pounding the runways of Paris after being hired last year by the likes of Miu Miu, Balenciaga and Versace.
The appeal for brands seems clear. “Clicks are the new advertising,” said the former casting director James Scully. “Nepo babies direct huge amounts of online traffic and engagement regardless of how tall they are or how well they can walk.”
He noted that many such models have large social media followings and bring millions of new eyeballs to a brand, thanks to the fan bases established around their family’s footholds in reality television, music or entertainment. Often, conventional industry thresholds are lowered to accommodate them.
“Kaia Gerber and Gigi Hadid would have walked into agencies and been signed, whoever their parents were,” Mr. Scully continued. “That said, the net is cast very wide now, and almost anyone will do. If you’re the average-looking daughter of a celebrity these days, then frankly you are as likely to be cast in a Prada show as if you are an actual model.”
According to Lucie Greene, a trend forecaster for Light Years, much of our gawking is driven by a primal impulse to search nepo baby faces for recognizable genetic similarities and contrasts with their famous parents, and to praise or shame them accordingly. There’s also a sense of being in the know, she said. Perhaps you knew the lineage of Ms. Wigram before anyone else.
Then, too, at a time when beautiful young models are 10 a penny (and often not especially scintillating in interviews), a carefully curated tidbit or beauty tip gleaned from someone raised inside an A-lister household generates far more headlines than those with a conventional background.
“There’s a race on now to secure the latest progeny to come of age, and a sense of cachet for the brand that gets to book the latest nepo on the block as a model or friend of the house,” Ms. Greene said.
Then there is the allure for the offspring themselves, fetishized and fawned over in a world where being a model — and having the ability and influence to sell a product because of the way you look — appears to be the ultimate form of public validation. Twenty years ago, nepo babies like Stella Tennant who were trying to model would often distance themselves from their family name so they would not be accused of nepotism. In 2024, most actively court that attention, knowing the power it brings.
“Generation Z kids with inherited fame were brought up in this mess,” Mr. Scully said. “Their standards of beauty and taste and accomplishment are different because they live in the age of influencers, so this is all they know. Digital personas are as important to them as their real ones, whoever your mom or dad is.”
Many children eventually use the profile boost from their modeling as a steppingstone to something else — often acting — as seen in the leaps from the runway to Hollywood by Lily-Rose Depp, Rafferty Law and Dree Hemingway. Many grouch that the outrage and opprobrium they attract is unfair. Almost all of them say that they may get a foot in the door, only to have to work twice as hard and be twice as good to prove themselves equal to the task, which inevitably prompts backlash from fellow models with less starry origin stories.
After Ms. Depp complained about the resentment during an interview in 2022, the model Vittoria Ceretti wrote on Instagram: “I know it’s not your fault, but please, appreciate and know the place you came from. You can tell me your sad little story about it (even at the end of the day you can still always cry on your dad’s couch in your villa in Malibu), but how about not being able to pay for your flight back home to your family?”
Anok Yai also posted her thoughts about nepo-baby models on the social media platform. “Seeing people benefit from nepotism doesn’t bother me at all — I know my talent and work ethic will get me into any room I want,” she wrote. “But goddamn if only you knew the hell we go through just to be able to stand in the same room you were born in.”
