The Rise of the Model Sons
There are many paths a son can take. He can go into the family business. He can strike out on his own. Or, for the sons of celebrities, he can be a model. Indeed, the latter may be one of the most popular careers of 2025.
Behold: the model son. Like their more established model-daughter counterparts, some are descendants of the ’90s Supers themselves; others are the offspring of Oscar winners, rock stars, and sports legends. Vanity Fair explored the first crop of model sons hitting the runways nearly a decade ago. It was 2016, when then teenagers like Jaden Smith, Anwar Hadid, Presley Gerber, and Rafferty Law had first entered the industry. By 2018, Dolce & Gabbana would cast eight model sons to walk in their fall menswear show. Some from that first wave have kept up with the It-boy modeling life since then; others have followed different callings. But for every model son who’s left the industry, a few more have stepped up to join. (In 2019, W also logged the lesser-discussed microcosm of model dads, who are models who happen to be fathers; there are even model grandsons, such as Jack Nicholson’s grandson Duke, who appeared on Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell! album cover, and Bob Dylan’s grandson Levi, who recently posed in sunglasses for Jacques Marie Mage and popped up in a Levi’s ad with Beyoncé.)
Model sons tend to be multidisciplinary: Between film, music, art, fashion, and hot-sauce-making, they often have many pursuits to choose from. Modeling is perhaps the most natural, even innocuous, road for the child of a famous person to walk down. With their hereditary gifts of height and/or striking cheekbones, or an uncanny resemblance to a face we already recognize, the reasoning behind celeb kids’ presence on runways and in campaigns often lies somewhere between stunt casting and raw talent. Why not capitalize on one’s inherited beauty and glamour? Besides, the people love to see the results of a celebrity Punnett square.
“There’s a general intrigue in people’s icons, and how the ‘icon’ is passed down to the next generation,” says publicist Alyssa Kane. Her client, Jackson Lewis Lee—son of Spike—recently walked in a runway show for another one of her clients, the preppy American brand J. Press. As Kane sees it, “There are two types of runway shows…. Some shows are about, you know, having a hanger go down the runway, because it’s about the clothes. And some brands are trying to educate or tell a story about who is the person that wears this clothing.” For the latter sort, she notes, you’ll want “people that are recognizable, and then, of course, traditional models too.”
Casting director Anita Bitton, who has shepherded the careers of several model sons—including Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher’s lookalike boys, Lennon and Gene—says it helps, from a casting perspective, that model sons are accessible, as they tend to congregate in fashionable cities like London, Paris, or New York, and easy to spot, because “these kids grow up to look just like their parents.” They also have a built-in level of comfort with the job—especially if they grew up going to flashy events or being photographed by paparazzi, they’re used to being in front of cameras. (Plus, she adds, as the business of men’s fashion has grown, so too has “our interest in men as fashionable beings.”)
