Nepo Babies Crowd the Runways

Family ties: Kendall Jenner on the Victoria Beckham runway in September; Kaia Gerber at Valentino couture in July; and Gigi Hadid at Versace at Milan Fashion Week in February. Credit…Peter White/Getty Images, Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images, Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

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.

Maya Wigram, the daughter of Phoebe Philo, closed the Burberry show at London Fashion Week.Credit…Filippo Fior/Burberry

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.