nee-length skirts and bras worn as tops were two of the main takeaways from fashion month, which wrapped up this week. But the biggest trend had nothing to do with clothing. From New York and London to Milan and Paris, the shows were the ultimate proof of a nepo baby takeover.
John Travolta's daughter, Ella Bleu, 26, made her Paris catwalk debut at Miu Miu. Apple Martin, 22, the daughter of Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow, walked the Chloé show.
Meanwhile, the Vogue World event in Milan featured the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli's son Matteo, 29, Nick and Susie Cave's son Earl, 26, Ava Phillippe, 27, the daughter of the actors Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe, and many more nepo babies in attendance.
Mark Borkowski, a PR consultant, described the nepo baby phenomenon as "a wonderful cocktail of youth, nostalgia and inherited glamour".
Fran Hoepfner, the author of The Field Guide to Nepo Babies, said it was vital that a nepo had both a family connection and a direct or adjacent industry connection. "Simply having rich parents does not automatically make someone a nepo baby," she said. "It just makes you lucky."
Previously, the children of famous people tended to downplay their family connections or even change their surnames. Nicolas Cage was born Coppola – his uncle is the legendary US film-maker – while Angelina Jolie dropped the Voight from her surname in an attempt to distance herself from her actor father, Jon Voight.
According to Borkowski, we are now seeing play out "the industrialisation of inherited fame". He described it as a cultural shift. "For years people tried to escape from the shadow of their parents because it actually hindered their career. Now they are no longer apologising for their privilege."
Nicole Kidman brought her daughter Faith Urban, 15, to Chanel, while The Diplomat star Keri Russell's plus one at the Louis Vuitton show was her 13-year-old daughter, Willa. Elsewhere, the supermodels Karen Elson and Kristen McMenamy danced with their daughters Scarlett Teresa White, 20, and Lily McMenamy, 32, on the H&M catwalk.
Four years after New York magazine declared 2022 the "year of the nepo baby", the boom is showing no sign of slowing down. The appeal for brands is simple: the casting of a nepo instantly captures mass audience attention.
It is not limited only to fashion. The new Sense and Sensibility's film credits read like a nepo roll-call. Samantha Morton's daughter Esmé Creed-Miles plays Marianne Dashwood, while Sting's non-binary child Eliot Sumner stars as Mr Palmer. Meanwhile, Cillian Murphy's son Aran is currently on TV screens as Sharon Horgan's son in Youth, and Kate Winslet's son Joe Anders stars in Netflix's adaptation of John Steinbeck's 1952 novel East of Eden.
"It's a marketing tool," Borkowski said. "Casting an unknown model or actor is one thing, but casting the daughter of a Hollywood legend gives a brand all that inherited fame and decades of cultural recognition."
The internet has been crucial to the nepo baby coup. In an age where anyone with a phone and internet access can become famous, why not lean into those existing famous family roots? "You don't have to have any real talent to develop a fanbase," Borkowski said.
In 2023 Romy Mars, the daughter of the film-maker Sofia Coppola and musician Thomas Mars, went viral after posting about being grounded because she had tried to charter a helicopter to have dinner with a friend using her father's credit card.
In the now deleted video, she also revealed she wasn't meant to have a social media account. "They don't want me to be a nepotism kid but TikTok is not gonna make me famous, so it doesn't really matter," she said. Three years later she has amassed nearly 800,000 followers, starred in a film directed by her grandfather and released an album. Her debut music video was directed by her mum.
Hoepfner described Mars's behaviour as "sheer nepo baby perfection". She said today's generation had "learned lessons from their older millennial peers, who either deflected or tried to play off their privilege with some degree of false humility."
Elsewhere, Francesca Scorsese is a budding actor and film-maker, but it is her TikTok videos starring her Goodfellas director dad, Martin, that have led to millions of followers. In one, she asks him to identify "feminine items" including a menstrual cup, which Scorsese mistakes for a drinks container; in another, she tests him on gen Z slang.
Even if someone does try to move beyond their family name, they often continue to leverage their connections. In January, in a six-page Instagram statement, Brooklyn Beckham said he was cutting ties with his parents. That decision led to him becoming more famous than ever. Borkowski described the continuing attention that unfolded as a cross between "the Big Brother house and a soap opera", with fans of each member of the family waiting to see what happened next.
Hoepfner said: "The fact of the matter is that there's nothing they can really do about the fact that they're a nepo baby, so they might as well own it. The best way to go about that at this point might as well be by doing it brazenly, with some degree of style or panache – especially if they aren't really sorry about it."