You would think, if enough decades go past and millions are earned, that a famous, beautiful woman would gracefully retire from view, allowing new talent to emerge and freeing up opportunities to be grasped by those who are unafraid of hard work. But, nope, not a bit of it – now, they simply rope in their daughter too.
The latest mother-daughter Frankenstein’s monster has popped up in an advert for American brand Gap, clad head-to-toe in denim.
The advert stars Gwyneth Paltrow, 53, looking very airbrushed indeed, alongside Apple, her 21-year-old daughter from her marriage to Coldplay frontman and professional virtue-signaller Chris Martin.
As if we hadn’t had our fill of Martin and Paltrow, who admonish us at every turn about not living beautifully or consciously enough, now we have the daughter too!
The casting of Apple (already the face of London brand Self-Portrait) was predictably a shoo-in: Gap’s designer, Zac Posen, first met her when she was crawling around as a baby at the Oscars apparently. Her only talent, then as now, was to have been born.
The current crop of female stars who should be reaching their sell-by date despite the matcha lattes and mouth tape (according to Gwyneth, breathing through your nose makes your lips younger) aren’t going anywhere soon.
Why should they? They have come up with the ultimate rejuvenating injection of longevity – having a dewy doppelganger pop up alongside them to extend Mom’s shelf life and earning power. And all that’s required of the child, who’s never had to struggle, to waitress, to save up to buy clothes (they merely raided their mother’s wardrobe), is to pout precociously for the camera.
This latest nepo baby outing is only one of a long line. Kate Moss shoehorned daughter Lila Grace on to the cover of Vogue Italia with her when she was just 13. Cindy Crawford waited until daughter Kaia Gerber was 14 before she did the same thing for the cover of Vogue Paris.
Gerber now the face of myriad brands including Chanel, is so identically beautiful to her mother it’s as if she wasn’t born, she was cloned. Andie MacDowell’s daughter Margaret Qualley is now also a movie star (though she did bother to get out of bed and train as a ballet dancer first).
How soon before Victoria Beckham employs Harper, 14, as her house model? Or Meghan wheels out four-year-old Lilibet? Writing as someone who never had a leg-up, whose mother’s only ambition was for me not to be run over by a car, this latest parading of progeny – and Gwyneth and Apple are so alike, I thought I was seeing double – is nausea-inducing.
It wasn’t that long ago that to model for Gap required you to be Joan Didion: both clever and campaigning. These days? You just need to have been born of a famous woman. (Gwyneth has form. Her mother Blythe Danner is a Hollywood star too.)
If I were a casting director, any long-limbed girl with a famous surname would immediately get turned away. Why? Because I would very much doubt she’d pounded pavements in search of a job to keep her going. Doubt she had struggled. Doubt she has a work ethic.
Like the spawn of the Gallagher brothers, who inherited prodigious eyebrows but little talent, the only reason these good-looking children land modelling gigs is so their parents can bask in their dewiness (‘Look what I made!’). The worry that a younger version of yourself might show you up in a bad light no longer applies, of course; not in this era of digital enhancement, great lighting and nutrition.
Or, in the case of Gwyneth, a routine of great sleep, oil pulling (you slosh minty-herby coconut oil around your mouth for five minutes), meditation, intermittent fasting, exfoliator, toner, serum, eye cream, Glow Lotion, her own range of skincare which is actually called GoopGenes, including face cream and lip balm (‘It’s so cushiony!’), sunscreen and an infrared sauna blanket. You see, this is the reason these women pose with their daughters: it’s to say, we look the same.
My beauty routine works. It means I can sell you more stuff. There is no need for these mums to feel envy or shame at being compared to their offspring because they have enough money to still look amazing. These women aren’t tired, they haven’t ‘let themselves go’ (for which read been busy and selfless). The daughters are plonked in the picture to highlight their parent’s fabulousness.
(It’s useful that modelling requires little talent; you don’t often get nepo-baby brain surgeons or, given David Beckham’s sons, nepo worldclass footballers.)
I wonder how the insufferably earnest Chris Martin squares his daughter’s new job selling stuff with his own mission to save the planet: denim is the most polluting, water-thirsty fabric there is, and in the new GapStudio ad, both his ex and his daughter are dressed in the Canadian tuxedo – double denim to me and you.
The man who best summed up this unimaginative, lazy trend, the very opposite of a meritocracy and creativity, is the late designer Karl Lagerfield , who famously opined of Stella McCartney’s appointment at Chloe: ‘They should have taken a big name. They did – but in music, not fashion.’
