On the runway, Vivian Wilson is more than just Elon Musk’s daughter

Maura Judkis and Shane O’Neill

Perhaps no one is having a better New York Fashion Week than Vivian Jenna Wilson. The emerging model and her waist-length strawberry blond hair have walked in four shows, hot off of a New York Magazine cover story welcoming her into the celebrity elite.

This would all be less of a big deal if Wilson were not also Elon Musk’s estranged transgender daughter.

At Prabal Gurung, held Saturday in St. Bartholomew’s Church on Park Avenue, she emerged to the sound of a choir in an ecru trumpet-hem maxi dress, stepping down the stairs with a practiced model-blank gaze.

At Dauphinette on Sunday, she bolted onto the runway with a shriek and dashed away as if someone were chasing her - an attention-getting staged moment in the show. Designer Olivia Cheng had dressed her in a bikini top and white high-low hemmed skirt covered with green beetles.

And at the presentation for accessories designer Alexis Bittar, she took part in a mock Miss USA pageant - an obvious reference to President Donald Trump, her father’s sometimes-ally, who owned that pageant from 1996 to 2015. Every contestant in the pageant was a trans woman, and all of them wore sashes from red states. Wilson played a bratty Miss South Carolina who scoffed, sneered and rolled her eyes when she lost to Miss Louisiana, played by trans activist and model Gia Love.

Catching up with her backstage at Monday’s Chris Habana show - her fourth in as many days - Wilson listed her mental order of operations for a successful runway walk.

“Don’t trip, don’t die, serve c---, slay,” she said. “I think in that order.”

Last September, the political statements at New York Fashion Week were overt: The hot accessory was a camouflage Harris/Walz hat, Batsheva showed “Cat Lady” sweatshirts and Prabal Gurung sent a coconut tree dress down the runway in an apparent reference to a Kamala Harris meme. The Council of Fashion Designers of America sponsored a get-out-the-vote march, and Jill Biden addressed the crowd.

This year the political symbols were scant with the exception of a flag-draped presentation from the brand Alice + Olivia and a Libertine runway show that nodded to the American Revolution. Against that relatively apolitical backdrop, casting Wilson could be read as a statement - if not an explicit one.

“For me casting Vivian Jenna Wilson was an incredible gift,” Bittar said via email. In addition to Wilson’s “otherworldly ethereal beauty,” Bittar said that “she represents so much strength and conviction. I cannot imagine the challenges she faces, but I admire her for her strength.”

At the conclusion of the presentation, Bittar addressed the audience onstage.

“I just wanted to say, we need to fight for our f---ing rights,” he said. “Do not be passive right now.”

At Dauphinette, Wilson’s dramatic entrance was intended to “disrupt a pretty moment and say, ‘Everything is not okay, even when it’s beautiful,’” said Cheng, via email. “Our society is in a critical place and nobody, not even the fashion girls, can afford to rest on our laurels.”

Gurung’s show was titled “Angels in America,” named after Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer-winning play about homosexuality and AIDS in the 1980s. In the show notes, the designer wrote that he believed “those who lived between binaries, who defied the roles society imposed, were seen as closer to god, closer to the divine,” he wrote. The collection, he said, is about “honoring those who embody hope when the world feels bound and broken.”

Wilson was the penultimate model for Habana, a designer and New York nightlife fixture who was hosting his first runway show in the West Village. When the lights dimmed, the audience cheered at the sound of the intro music from the website Pornhub, which sponsored the show. Two models wore looks with their breasts, butts and crotches clamped tightly against clear plexiglass plates.

When Wilson emerged, several people could be heard whispering her name in the crowd. She wore a column dress fashioned from safety pins, strips of leather and metal hardware, all so tight that she needed to take small, deliberate steps. She walked slowly, eyes fixed forward, hands on her hips.

At one point her cream-colored stiletto separated from her foot. She quickly found her way back into the shoe.

The crowd roared at the show’s end.

“I wanted people to be challenged in how sex is expressed in so many different ways and how sex can be elevated into art,” Habana said. But the designer shrugged off the notion that Wilson had been included in the show for any reason besides her modeling prowess. “Really, it was actually just her being beautiful,” he said. “I really just thought when I was introduced to her she had this glowing personality that I really, really liked.”

In the basement dressing room after the show, photographers and G-string-clad hosts of the internet show Stripper News milled about.

Before the interview started, Ava Cutrone, daughter and collaborator of the notorious PR maven Kelly Cutrone, laid down one ground rule.

“No questions at all about her dad,” she said, before introducing Wilson, who was being slowly disentangled from her metal garment.

“Are you ready for us to drop this dress?” asked the woman helping her.

“Yes, please, thank you so much,” Wilson replied. The bodice unfurled.

“You could actually make a lot of money if you took these pictures,” Wilson said as she pulled herself into a bralette.

Wilson said she no longer feels self-conscious changing clothes in front of strangers. “By the eight millionth time you just kind of have to get used to it.”

Someone handed her an olive-green tank top. Wilson reflected on the highlights and lowlights of her first New York Fashion Week. “Worst part? Probably when my foot slipped out of the shoe,” she said. “Highlights were jamming my foot back in.”

Wilson climbed the stairs and returned to the runway, where a cluster of well-wishers had been waiting for her. She greeted each with casual warmth.

Miranda Monroe, a stylist from Los Angeles, asked Wilson to pose for a photo with her. Wilson happily obliged, striking pose after campy pose as Monroe’s friend and collaborator Sterling Tull took photos.

“She’s just going to absolutely dominate the fashion world,” Monroe said. “She’s excited about modeling and that excitement and being new is something that you don’t see every day.”

Asked about Wilson’s famous father, Monroe said, “I think she’s really brave.” But that’s not why the stylist is a fan.

“Being yourself is everything,” Monroe said. “And that’s it.”