Our Latest Nepo Baby Graces the Runway

As fashion month draws to a close, Sunday Urban daughter of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, made her runway debut walking for Miu Miu’s Autumn/Winter 2024 collection. The 16-year-old had the honour of opening the show – a prized position many aspiring models dream of achieving.  

However, the minute we hear her last name, our minds immediately turn to her famous parents rather than her runway debut. This is reflected in articles focusing on the parents rather than “Sunday Rose’s runway debut”. Now the question is,  would she have achieved this position without her nepotism? 

The modelling industry has always been lenient towards nepotism, Kaia Gerber, Kendall Jenner, Lily-Rose Depp and so many more. The advantage of a high-profile mother, father or even a famous partner creates a limelight online which further develops their profile and notoriety. These ‘nepo-babies’ have skyrocketed to the forefront of the fashion industry.

Many models acknowledge their nepotism and the privileges they have, while some have argued that the nepotism label does not matter, and hard work is still done to achieve what they want. In November of 2022, Lily-Rose Depp spoke to Elle regarding this ongoing debate, stating that “maybe you get your foot in the door, but you still just have your foot in the door. There’s a lot of work that comes after that”. 

However, Depp’s lack of self-awareness about how nepotism has shaped her career sparked reactions from other models, such as top models Anok Yai and Vittoria Ceretti. Ceretti expressed the difficulties at the beginning of her career the past 5 years, stating on her Instagram stories: “You have no idea how much you have to fight to make people respect you”. Yai, who was born in Egypt to a family of South Sudanese refugees, also expressed the difficulties of booking a job due to nepotism. “I will see some of you privileged kids stress about not booking a job because of the impact on your career while there are those of us who stress about not booking a job because we don’t know if we’ll be able to take care of our parents this month or put our siblings through school”.  

As the modelling industry continues to evolve, the role of nepotism remains a relevant and often controversial topic, prompting us to reconsider where true talent lies in a world filled with family ties.