When Apple Martin wore a simple black column dress to the Marty Supreme premiere in New York on Tuesday night, the 21-year-old looked elegant and chic. She also looked just like her mother.
Yes, there was a genetic resemblance to Gwyneth Paltrow, 55 – both share the same blonde hair, blue eyes and delicate beauty. But it was further enhanced by the fact that the two were sharing a wardrobe.
Apple’s dress – a scoop-neck, low-back, floor-length affair by Calvin Klein – was originally worn by Gwyneth to the New York premiere of her film Emma in 1996.
With striking attention to detail, Apple had even elected to wear her hair in the same style that her mother did 29 years ago – a messy bun, with two tendrils falling loosely on either side of her face. Even the diamond stud earrings were the same: all that differed was the make-up, with Apple eschewing the red lipstick Gwyneth wore in 1996 for a more natural hue.
Not that this small detail did anything to dilute the message. That message being that, if you are a forty or fifty-something star with a gorgeous young daughter, twinning is winning.
Apple Martin, daughter of Coldplay’s Chris and actress Gwyneth Paltrow, this week borrows her mum’s 1996 Calvin Klein dress to the premiere of Marty Supreme in New York
Forget Botox: a far smarter way of preserving your youth and remaining relevant is to ensure that everyone runs comparison pics of you in your twenty-something heyday, wearing the same dress your daughter just happened to borrow.
What’s curious is why the children of megastars, many of whom are at great pains to stress they are definitely not nepo-babies, don’t mind dressing like mini-mes.
Apple Martin could have worn any gown she wanted. Perhaps a little something by Chanel, whose 2023 Paris couture show she attended, in a plum front-row seat.
Designers will be clamouring to dress Apple, just as they clamour to dress any celebrity daughter, knowing that their famous parentage – in addition to Paltrow, Apple’s father is Coldplay frontman Chris Martin – will guarantee more coverage than the average aspiring actress could ever dream of.
But nostalgia is a powerful marketing tool. In today’s hyper-competitive world, when more things than ever vie for our attention, even A-list celebrities must use every trick in the book to ensure they are noticed.
And their latest trick, the nepo dress, is a surefire winner. What better than a garment that combines style with history, and has an emotional resonance for fans remembering who wore it the first time around?
Which is exactly why it is being employed by so many mother-daughter duos.
Brooke Shields and her daughter both wore the same glittering nude gown, decades apart
When Carys Zeta Douglas wore a pink satin slip dress to celebrate her 21st birthday in 2021, every photo was accompanied by a ‘compare and contrast’ shot of her mother, Catherine Zeta Jones, whose dress she’d borrowed.
The Welsh actress first wore it to the 1999 MTV Awards, aged 29, and, while she’s still beautiful at 56, rare is the woman who doesn’t bask in the glory of a complimentary throwback pic. Perhaps that’s why this October, the duo repeated the trick, with Carys borrowing a strappy black dress first worn by her mother in 2015.
Hollywood actresses including Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Brooke Shields, Jessica Alba, Susan Sarandon and Courteney Cox have enjoyed the warm familial glow of lending their daughter a nepo dress, and these have usually been one-off occasions that felt sweetly organic.
Other instances seem more calculated. In 2024, model and actress Kaia Gerber, 23, wore a white bandage dress by Herve Leger to the Toronto Film Festival premiere of her film, Shell. Before you could say ‘snap’, the internet was awash with images of her supermodel mother, Cindy Crawford, wearing the same dress at the 1993 Oscars.
Miss Martin strikes a pose in Ms Paltrow’s 2002 Oscars ensemble two years ago
Gwyneth Paltrow in the same gown at the 74th Annual Academy Awards in 2002
‘Kaia had sent me a mood board and this was one of her references,’ said Gerber’s stylist, Molly Dickinson, at the time. ‘I thought it would be amazing to pay tribute to Cindy’s iconic moment.’
Very touching, yes: but also very useful for amplifying mother and daughter’s lucrative sponsorship deal with Omega.
Crawford was the Swiss watch company’s first ambassador, a position she’s held since 1995. Her daughter, meanwhile, was signed up in 2017, aged 16. Which is why it was a no-brainer for Gerber to wear not only a replica of Crawford’s white bandage dress, but also a vintage Omega watch from her mother’s personal collection.
We all do what we can to help our children. It’s just that, for most people, this usually means hooking them up with a mate who runs a pub to get some bar shifts, as opposed to a multi-million-pound sponsorship deal.
For nepo babies, the pickings are far richer. Which is probably why, even away from the red carpet, Crawford and Gerber often emphasise their mother/daughter relationship by dressing in a similar way, twinning in jeans, white sneakers and leather jackets in New York (2019) and wearing matching belted camel coats in Paris (2022).
Lest the message be lost, in 2017, they both wore identical T-shirts bearing the legend ‘Mom Genes’. Six years later, in 2023, they entered into a handsomely paid deal with fashion giant Zara.
Kaia Gerber, daughter of model Cindy Crawford, takes her mum’s white Herve Leger dress to the red carpet last year
Her model mum wore it to the Oscars in 1993, which she attended with her then-husband Richard Gere
If you are the mother of teenage daughters, you may already have felt the sting of rejection that comes from having lovingly kept your favourite clothes for them to wear one day, only to have them dismissed, many years later, for being ‘absolutely minging’. In Hollywood, different rules apply.
Rather than a bag of tatty Topshop pieces, celebrity offspring can run amok in their mother’s temperature-controlled wardrobe, whose treasures are lovingly suspended amid bleach-free tissue paper in moth-proof bags.
Any nepo baby can wear a dress plucked straight off the catwalk. They can also wear a well-chosen vintage dress. But a dress with a history; a one-off whose story is as unique as a fingerprint? For that, you need a nepo dress.
While your own daughter wouldn’t be seen dead in an outfit you wore in your twenties, an A-lister’s daughter has been schooled to see things differently.
In 2023, Paltrow posted a photo of her daughter in an Alexander McQueen dress first worn by her to the 2002 Oscars. Taken in her mother’s closet, the photo looked like any daughter playing dress-up. But it was also a clever way of setting the stage.
Catherine Zeta-Jones’ daughter borrowed her 1999 pink lacy dress for a party last year
Speaking to Vogue in September, Paltrow reiterated that Apple loves wearing her vintage red carpet gowns – sometimes without asking.
So far, so typical. What isn’t typical, however, is the six or seven-figure deal the duo inked to co-star in Gap’s autumn/winter advertising campaign.
Launched in September, the campaign, which included a film featuring ‘moments of playful borrowing between mother and daughter’, emphasised how personal style evolves across generations. It also emphasised how nepotism works.
Proof that, in today’s ruthlessly competitive world, it really does pay to keep it in the family.
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