Another fashion month has concluded, and not without a few surprises in its final days – Hedi Slimane’s departure from Celine, and a brand new fledgling model on the block.
The latest name to know is Sunday Rose Kidman Urban, the 16-year-old daughter of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, who walked the Miu Miu show at Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday.
Yes, it feels like five minutes ago we were discussing the couple’s choice of “Sunday” as a baby name, but here she is, as tall as her mother, and with the same capacity to make whatever she wears look very good indeed.
The teenager’s modelling debut was the star turn in a show full of star turns, sharing the catwalk with Alexa Chung, Willem Dafoe, Hillary Swank and Cara Delevingne. She also attended a celebrity-filled post-show dinner, and sat front row at Balenciaga with her mother. She may be a “nepo baby” (Gen-Z speak for someone whose career has benefited from famous parents’ connections), but even the most dismissive critic has to admit she’s got something that makes her stand out.
And this is what makes Sunday Rose, famous surname or not, hot property as a model: people are interested in her, which means brands will be prepared to pay for a chance to share that spotlight.
Sunday Rose appears to be up for it, too. She attended her first fashion show as a guest in June (Balenciaga couture in Paris, no big deal). In a conversation with Victoria Beckham published this summer in Vogue Australia, Kidman revealed why she’d finally agreed to let Sunday join her. “She’s about to turn 16. That’s what I told her, when she was 16 she was allowed to come to a show. She’s wanted to go for a long time. That was her foray into it… It’s a push-pull. I don’t want to hold her back because I don’t want to be coddling her.”
Kidman and Urban won’t be alone in trying to strike a balance between keeping their children grounded and allowing them to follow their dreams, but there is an established path for the “launch” of celebrity offspring into public life, and fashion is usually the vehicle.
It starts with the kind of debut that most models could only dream of – a Miu Miu catwalk show is one of them. Miuccia Prada has form when it comes to casting the next big thing – Daria Werbowy, Karolína Kurková, Lindsey Wixson and Arizona Muse all got their start as Prada “exclusives,” which means they were contractually obliged not to walk any other shows that season. It’s considered a great privilege for a young model, and an indication that they’re on track for a different level of success.
Getting Sunday Rose is a coup for Miu Miu too, says Sara McCorquodale, CEO and founder of influencer intelligence and digital trends platform, CORQ.: “She hasn’t had a huge amount of media exposure and this creates additional buzz about the show. It’s an unexpected story that suddenly makes a niche event relevant to a mass audience.”
That we don’t know much about Sunday Rose is all part of the appeal. The other advantage is that her parents’ wealth and connections give her the luxury of being able to develop her modelling career slowly and carefully, with the best management team and agents around her. For Sunday Rose, there will be no e-commerce modelling shoots to pay the bills.
“To introduce her in this luxury context speaks volumes about the intention for her personal brand,” McCorquodale says. “I think we can expect a very curated career and trajectory. We’re not going to get ‘warts and all’ round-the-clock social content from her – she is being positioned as a specific kind of talent for the premium market.”
We’ve seen this strategy play out with the careers of other nepo baby models as well. Take Kaia Gerber, the 23-year-old daughter of Cindy Crawford and one of the most successful models working today. She signed with mega-agency IMG at the age of 15, and made her catwalk debut at 16 for Calvin Klein during Raf Simons’ tenure as artistic director.
Lily Rose Depp is another example: her mother, Vanessa Paradis, was a longtime muse of Karl Lagerfeld, and the late designer appointed Lily Rose as a Chanel brand ambassador after she turned 16.
This is just the tip of the iceberg: there are also the Hadid sisters, Gigi and Bella (daughters of Real Housewife Yolanda Hadid and property investor Mohamed Hadid), Kendall Jenner (daughter of Kris and Caitlyn, half-sister of the Kardashians), Lila Moss (daughter of Kate), Hailey Bieber (nee Baldwin), Iris Law (daughter of Jude), Deva Cassel (daughter of Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel) and Lennon Gallagher (son of Liam and Patsy Kensit). If you want to be a successful model, famous parents really help.
These children of celebrities are instant influencers, first appearing in paparazzi photographs with their parents or on their social media feeds, and then earning their own followings simply because people are curious about their celebrity-adjacent lives. Brands want a slice of this opportunity, former casting director James Scully told the New York Times: “Clicks are the new advertising. Nepo babies direct huge amounts of online traffic and engagement regardless of how tall they are or how well they can walk.”
There’s more depth to it than that though, McCorquodale says. “As a society, we’re intrigued by nepo babies because they represent the next chapter of a culturally relevant story. They trigger feelings of nostalgia and youth and have lived unique lives as the offspring of icons. They also provide generational common ground – Gen-X mothers who aspired to Kate Moss’ style will no doubt find their Gen-Z children are following her daughter Lila. Suddenly they are united by understanding two halves of one story. In the influencer era – where theoretically anyone can achieve fame – nepo babies also bring unspoken depth and legacy to the table.”
So uniting cousins Molly Moorish-Gallagher, Lennon Gallagher, Anaïs Gallagher and Gene Gallagher on the front row of the Burberry show last month – shortly after the announcement of the Oasis reunion – was a stroke of genius. “The brand seemed to be proudly referencing its cultural link to the Britpop era,” says McCorquodale. “For many, this was a bit of heyday and the suggestion we are entering a new era of this has positive, optimistic connotations.”
For her part, Sunday Rose seems like a grounded young woman. In an Instagram Reel for Vogue, she comes across as charming, with many viewers remarking on her “adorable” accent – a mix of southern American (the family is based in Nashville, Tennessee) and Australian, where both her parents were raised.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for so long, so when the offer came through it was really exciting,” she says in the clip. “And now the day is finally here. I was really stressed, but everyone here is really nice.”
If she can sustain that enthusiasm and professionalism, she could go far.
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