The next generation of supermodels has arrived - but that doesn’t mean their mothers aren’t still in Vogue too
The next generation of supermodels has arrived - but that doesn’t mean their mothers aren’t still in Vogue too, says Caroline Leaper...
To the uninitiated, Lila Grace Moss Hack may look like any other 14-year-old wearing braces and braiding her hair. But once you know where those cheekbones come from, you won’t be able to unsee the family resemblance.
Lila Grace landed her first independent modelling job last week, something that many would say was inevitable. Her parents, the British supermodel Kate Moss and the Dazed Media founder Jefferson Hack, had fought hard to keep her out of the public eye while growing up, with pictures of her only being released at Moss’s 2011 wedding to Jamie Hince and on the red carpet at the premiere of a Paddington bear movie in 2014.
Moss Hack’s first modelling job is a relatively soft step, appearing in a single new promotional image for The Braid Bar, a hair plaiting service at Selfridges, Oxford Street. Posing with her friend, The Clash musician Mick Jones's daughter Stella, they each model a new style of braid, now named on the salon’s menu - a high honour for any teenager.
“I cast girls that I feel are the faces of the future,” The Braid Bar founder Sarah Hiscox explains of the new young clique making up her menu of headshots, which also includes Iris Law, 16, the daughter of Jude Law and Sadie Frost and Anais Gallagher, 17, daughter of Noel Gallagher and Meg Matthews. “The majority of our customers are normal teenage girls, and they want to see girls who look like them. We’re not looking for people who we think are ready-made professionals, or models without personalities.”
Of course, one can’t help but notice that this new model army all seem to have parents who are household names. Iris Law just celebrated a second Burberry beauty campaign and sits front row at the brand’s shows. Lily Rose Depp, 17, the daughter of French singer and model Vanessa Paradis and actor Johnny Depp, has walked for Chanel.
“It’s not surprising to me to see girls like Iris and Anais doing so well now,” explains Hiscox of this new movement. “They’re all strong, opinionated and bright and they have something interesting to say.”
One of the model agencies that has already signed up some of the next-generation is Storm Model Management - the agency that discovered Kate Moss back in 1988. “It's a natural development - many of the girls inherit their mother's genes and their physical attributes, but also their personality and strong work ethic,” says Storm’s Paula Karaiskos, of why they now represent everyone from Renee Stewart, the daughter of Rod Stewart and Rachel Hunter, to Lottie Moss, Kate’s 19 year-old half-sister. “Marry this with a strong consumer familiarity and you have a great narrative to harness.”
Dolce and Gabbana’s February show, Karaiskos says, was a great example of why brands love to cast celebrity offspring, as the designers picked a host of young but familiar faces including Christie Brinkley’s daughter Sailor Brinkley-Cook, 18, and Storm new girl Lady Amelia Spencer, the niece of the late Diana, Princess of Wales to walk down their catwalk. “It was a Millennials show,” she says of why the designers picked girls with a strong social media presence - and interest. “There is a familiarity which the consumer recognises and this can be a good way for brands to to cut through and launch projects and campaigns.”
But while being the daughter of ‘someone’ may initially be a shortcut to the limelight it will only take you so far, especially when the average model career traditionally has only lasted five years, and hits peak earning power at around 20.
“I want to be taken seriously,” Kendall Jenner, the half sister to Kim Kardashian, told The Telegraph last year of the assumption that nepotism in fashion opened the right doors for the pedigreed newcomer. Indeed, she made it clear that a family name can be as troublesome as it is treasured. “I had to work even harder to get where I wanted because people didn’t take me seriously as a model. Because of the Kardashian name.”
Everyone wanted to see the first pictures of Cindy Crawford’s doppelganger daughter Kaia Gerber, 15, when they were released last year, but Crawford knew as well as anyone that to build a lasting career for her child would require a smarter strategy than that.
“If you have a successful parent and you go into the same business but if you’re not more successful, then what?” Crawford asked Vogue Australia last month. “The only concern I have for her, and it isn’t an issue, is that in the modelling world I hit the top, and if she doesn’t it might be a lot of pressure for her.”
As such, she’s arming her daughter with advice on building a steady career, pacing her jobs so that she doesn’t burn out or become overwhelmed at such a young age. As Moss recently started her own agency, too, there’s speculation that she may even be the first model mother to officially sign and manage her own daughter.
It sounds less about control or a ‘stage mum’ syndrome, for these models and mothers and more about protecting their children from what they know can be a brutal industry. It’s something that is happening beyond the modelling world too, with plenty of stars making similar moves to secure their children’s futures - be it trademarking their names as Victoria and David Beckham did with Harper this month, or simply encouraging them to build audiences on social media.
Perhaps the other thing that’s markedly different about the modelling world that their offspring are entering now to the one they launched their careers in, is that many of the parents are still working, too. Whereas once older models were expected to make way for the new generation coming through, in 2017 there seems to be room for both mother and daughter.
