Fashion’s Family Affair: Nepotism in the Modeling Industry
By: Megan Krueger
10 / 25 / 2024
Nepotism is not a new word when it comes to the entertainment and fashion industries. It was already making its rounds earlier this year after Beyoncé’s daughter Blue Ivy Carter joined the voice cast of the upcoming film Mufasa: The Lion King and around a month later, Kim Kardashian’s daughter North West appeared as Simba in Disney’s Lion King 30th Anniversary concert. Now, after the Miu Miu S/S 24/25 show in Paris, it seems like it’s circulating again. While Miu Miu made a number of out-of-the-box casting choices (see Willem Dafoe returning to the runway over a decade after the viral Prada Villains Runway in 2012), the choice fashion fans questioned the most was show opener: Sunday Rose Kidman-Urban, teenage daughter of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban. The backlash to Kidman-Urban’s runway debut was swift and brutal, with commenters likening the sixteen-year-old’s walk to the stomp of a petulant child and advising her to try her hand at acting instead. Even fashion industry insiders got in on the conversation, with model Alina Timo calling the situation "a joke" and posting a TikTok captioned “Omw to find a normal job since you can’t model anymore if you are not famous by birth.”
Of course, it would be silly to pretend that Sunday Rose was the only nepo baby at Paris Fashion Week. Amelia Grey Hamlin and Eliot Sumner also walked for Miu Miu, while Romeo Beckham made his Balenciaga debut, Kaia Gerber appeared for Valentino, and Kendall Jenner graced the runways of both Schiaparelli and Alaïa. The combined star power of all of these models’ parents begs the question: do all of them deserve their place in fashion? Is nepotism truly making the modeling industry into a joke?
Let’s get one thing straight: benefiting from nepotism doesn’t mean you’re untalented. It does, however, mean that you didn’t have to work nearly as hard to have those talents recognized. Nepotism is a problem because it places people in high-paying and influential positions based on their familial connections rather than their skillset, causing more capable individuals to be passed over. It also has a particularly troubling impact when it comes to the representation of people of color, as systemic racism within many industries makes it more difficult for aspiring nonwhite talent to get a foothold. And, while nepotism is present in every single industry from politics to medicine to business to banking, it tends to be more controversial in fields such as modeling. If you’re a nepo baby trying to make it as a lawyer, you still have to graduate law school. As Sunday Rose Kidman-Urban has revealed, it’s much harder to define what constitutes a qualified model.
Nepo baby models are never in short supply. Although there are always standout Cinderella stories like that of Cindy Crawford, who went from small-town girl to stunning on the cover of Vogue, fast-forward to today and it feels like most models have more in common with her daughter, Kaia Gerber. Gerber is one of many models preceded by celebrated surnames like Jenner, Hadid, Moss, and Depp—and many of them do not take kindly to being labeled beneficiaries of nepotism.
“The internet cares a lot more about who your family is than the people who are casting you in things,” Lily-Rose Depp said in a cover story with Elle, despite being a model at 5’5” and working with Chanel after her mother Vanessa Paradis famously collaborated with Chanel in the 90s. “Maybe you get your foot in the door, but you still just have your foot in the door.”
The most ironic part of this statement is that Depp has accidentally hit the nail on the head: your last name might not get you the part, but it gets you the audition, which for non-nepo babies is often the hardest part. Kendall Jenner, who acknowledges her mother Kris Jenner’s role in jumpstarting her career, still insists on dismissing the role of nepotism in her success, asserting in an interview with Andy Cohen, “I did everything that I was supposed to do, and had to do, to get to the position I’m at now as a model. I went to every single casting and ran all over, not only New York City but all over Europe trying to… get a job…. I definitely worked my way to where I am now.”
What Jenner and Depp fail to realize is that most models who are starting out can barely take time off from work to go to local auditions, let alone fly across the globe for jobs. Modeling is an infamously difficult industry to get into, and it takes a lot more than going to castings to actually make it a career.
Fashion model Anok Yai summed it up best in an Instagram story where she wrote, “I will see some of you privileged kids stress about not booking a job because of the impact on your career while there are those of us who stress… because we don't know if we’ll be able to take care of our parents this month or put our siblings through school. I know you work hard and have your struggles just like the rest of us. But goddamn if you only knew the hell we go through just to be able to stand in the same room that you were born in.”
While it’s disheartening to see the unfair advantages many models will receive due to their famous parentage, the decision to cast them certainly makes sense. Former casting director James Scully remarked to The New York Times that in the age of social media, nepo babies lend an undeniable advantage to a brand as they “direct huge amounts of online traffic and engagement regardless of how tall they are or how well they can walk.” Fashion houses are no longer on the hunt for the next big talent. They’re looking for whoever generates the most clicks and the most conversation, something Kendall Jenner, Lily-Rose Depp, and Sunday Rose Kidman-Urban can certainly contribute.
All in all, there’s not much anyone can do about the modeling industry’s obvious nepotism problem. Casting directors will continue favoring big names with big marketing potential, and celebrities will continue booking agents and auditions for their children. However, knowing how the industry works is a crucial tool for anyone wanting in, and given that most nepo baby models are not too open to discussing the privilege that kick-started their careers, it’s important to bear in mind that most models’ journeys to Miu Miu’s show for Paris Fashion Week will not be nearly as streamlined as industry insiders’.
Courtesy of Vogue, Bored Panda, Elle, YouTube, Paper Magazine, and The New York Times