The Kaia Gerber story is one, as Tan tells it, of 'Hollywood royalty: the next generation', while Lily-Rose Depp's fable is about 'Uncle Karl introducing her to fashion'. Mechetner is being 'sold', as Michelle Tan, editor of Seventeen, put it in a phone call, as a 'a role model for the boldness of teens'. And according to a spokesman for Dior, its 14-year-old, Mechetner, was chaperoned at all times and has returned to Israel for school, her future relationship with the brand to be determined.Įven more, there is increasingly a narrative around models themselves, an effort to move them from nameless mannequins to personalities. Meanwhile, Ivan Bart, president of IMG Models, the agency that represents Gerber, said it does not allow models under the age of 16 to do runway work.

Joan Didion, photographed here in 2012, represented a rare moment of 'silver' attention when, in January, she became the face of Céline's new advertising campaign.

In 2013, after lobbying from the CFDA and the Model Alliance, the New York state Legislature passed a law stating that all models under 18 must be treated as child performers, with all the related regulations, from limited work hours to trust accounts, supervision and checkups (and that brands must have a permit from the state Department of Labor, as must the models). In 2007, both the Council of Fashion Designers of America and the British Fashion Council issued health guidelines that strongly recommended (in the case of the US group) and required (the British council) that designers use models who were at least 16 for runway shows. Three years ago, all 21 international Vogues signed and published a pact pledging that they would not use models under 16 (though this has occasionally been circumvented, as in the case of Kaia Gerber, who recently appeared in Italian Vogue, the photos used as part of an 'age issue'). (Still, it is revealing that models are almost always referred to as 'girls' by the industry itself they aren't called 'women'.) There is unquestionably heightened awareness within the industry, not to mention within the law, when it comes to the need to protect underage girls working in a grown-up world. To be fair, there has been some movement between then and now. Here, she attends the Chanel show earlier this month, as part of Paris Fashion Week Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2015/2016 Dominique Charriau Some improvements And most consumers of adult fashion are, shocking as it may seem, actual adults.Īnother youngster, Lily-Rose Depp, 16, will be the face of Chanel's eyewear campaign. If the increasingly vociferous demands for diversity on the runway should have taught us anything, it is that consumers increasingly want to see models who look like them – all kinds of them. Almost two decades later, isn't it time we moved on? We're back in the days of Brooke Shields declaring, at age 15 (and in the 1980s): 'You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing,' and the 1990s world of photographer Corinne Day, a teenage Kate Moss and the waif. In one picture, she's wearing thigh-high leather Versace platform boots in another, cat-eye makeup, a Prada dress and a pout. Aside from Dior's new find, Sofia Mechetner, Chanel has announced that the face of its eyewear campaign will be Lily-Rose Depp, 16, daughter of Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis.Īnd Kaia Gerber, Cindy Crawford's daughter, has landed a photo spread in the September issue of CR Fashion Book, Carine Roitfeld's magazine.

New young models