Because “nepo babies” are invading fashion

Dressed in the same black leotard, tennis champion Serena Williams and her 3-year-old daughter Olympia share the poster for shoemaker Stuart Weitzman’s new campaign.

A few days earlier, fashion designer Marc Jacobs had hired Madonna’s daughter Lourdes as his new muse. Blue Ivy squirms in the presentation video of her mother Beyoncé’s Ivy Park collection in collaboration with Adidas. Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis, son of Isabelle Adjani and British actor Daniel Day-Lewis, poses with his mother for the new campaign by luxury tailor Berluti.

Indeed, if we start to think about it, the list of “children of” (nicknamed ” nepo children “) in fashion makes you dizzy (or nausea, depending): Lily-Rose Depp, daughter of Vanessa Paradis and Johnny Depp, is an ambassador for Chanel. Roméo Beckham, son of Victoria and David Beckham, of Burberry. Jaden Smith, son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, has a look at the women’s collections of Louis Vuitton.

Believing it would be a new rite of passage for its star seeds wanting to make a name for themselves!

A new obligatory rite of passage to make a name

These “daughters of” or ” nepo children » tend to master social networks better than their parents, and give everything to promote this type of contract and multiply projects.

This undoubtedly allows brands to unite a younger clientele, without misleading older buyers who have often seen these children of celebrities grow up in the media… Because their parents already aroused fascination, the aura of these baby muses of luxury is guaranteed.

And this, the brands have understood: these people thus benefit from a well-known name and an immediately evocative physical familiarity.

When they do without parents known to bet directly on eager children, big houses can even save money! A contract with Vanessa Paradis (known for 34 years, and Chanel ambassador with 30 years of seniority) certainly costs more than with Lily-Rose Depp, 21 years old and (already) 7 years of career in the audiovisual sector.

By employing the son of an already established muse, it necessarily gives a youthful boost to the brand’s image… without necessarily bringing new life.

The wearable charm of the new aristocracy

And this is the problem: luxury self-help is starting to tire. Although cultivating the idea of ​​exclusivity is part of his DNA, it increasingly resembles endogamy and nepotism (the buffer between rich and powerful of the same clan). Hence the nickname ” nepo children so popular on TikTok as to label these sons and daughters as.

If the family acts as a safe haven in times of crisis like the one we’re going through today, this excuse is starting to have a good back, as the fashion anthropolinguist explains. Saveria Mendella:

” This is not a new trend, this industry has been appealing to the “sons of” for a long time.. Because they and they are part of their historical clientele, but also for the ease of employing figures already massively known to the general public.

Since the pandemic, we’ve all limited our social interactions to a circle of loved ones, which fashion logically reflects. But the refusal to propose new figures annoys us more, because it goes against what we are trying to overcome as a society : inherited social inequalities, lack of inclusion and diversity, self-segregation that does not even notice it. »

Why do brands capitalize so much on “nepo babies”?

If we are starting to get used to seeing the children of stars as fashion muses, the doctoral student of the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales notes that this industry also recruits on the side of the old nobility with great communication :

“The novelty is not calling the aristos. It was already the case of Cara Delevingne who belongs to the English nobility… But her brands presented her rather as a rebel icon. Today they gladly exploit the monarchical status of the new muses.

Let’s mention Dior who has paraded Nikolai, Prince of Denmark several times. Dolce & Gabbana appoint Kitty Spencer as their new ambassador, emphasizing the fact that she is Lady Di’s niece. Or even Chanel, who takes Charlotte Casiraghi as her muse and gives her a book club on the pretext that she has a philosophy degree…”

For the fashion language specialist, the industry is in fact proving to withdraw into itself:

“Where French cinema pretends not to reproduce itself from father to son and from mother to daughter, fashion does not ask questions and shows it in its campaigns as well. It closes in on itselfin a microcosm, among figures very close in the values ​​of exclusivity, rarity and nobility.

While it could make the effort to show new inspiring figures, more in line with social expectations… Show other ways of forming a family, other less hierarchical, less biologizing kinship models. »

Should we see a wear on of this trend via the social plan negotiated by the Comptoir des Cotonniers brand, which has long capitalized on country mother-daughter duos (including Charlotte Gainsbourg and her daughter Alice Attal)? In any case, what is certain is that the difficulties of this brand largely precede the pandemic, as revealed by the company in a statement released by 20 minutes.

Maybe it’s time for the “daughters of” or “nepo boys” to shine on their own. And above all that fashion questions its own exclusive self-segregation, to renew and reinvent itself to the fullest.