Anyone with under 100k followers is instantly more interesting than the mega-celebrities on Instagram, but there is something else to Grace Burns’ appeal: she’s the daughter of Christy Turlington, one of the founding mothers of the 1990’s supermodel.
19 and in her first semester at NYU, Grace describes herself as an aspiring writer, model, and photographer. Her Instagram gives a peek into the world of the rich and carefree who are just like us (we wish).
Grace is among an entire generation of nepo baby models who are picking up where their mother’s career left off. Lila Moss, daughter of Kate Moss and bestfriends with Grace has walked in major fashion shows ever since her first show with Mui Mui in October 2020.
Grace is taking a different approach. She has yet to walk a show and yet to be the face for notorious magazines. During her last months of high school, Grace began her soft launch into modeling with indie magazines.
Over the course of 2022 Grace worked with several magazines, the first being Pop Magazine, which has worked with other nepo babies like Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid. For the Spring-Summer March 2022 issue, Grace is a vision in red who’s girlish glow feels straight out of a Sofia Coppola film.
Grace worked with Perfect Magazine this past August as part of their Issue 3 campaign, #PerfectCelebration, featuring Nicole Kidman, Precious Lee, and others as individual cover stars. This shoot is my favorite of all. It’s creatively driven and experimental (the opposite of what American Vogue has been doing). Both elements that help a new model to stand out.
Most recently, Grace was the solo model for the cover of Homme Girls Magazine’s eighth issue in October 2022 with a collaboration with Marc Jacobs’ Heaven. This shoot shows that Grace is experimenting with current brands that she feels fits for this moment in fashion. She isn’t looking for the next opportunity to be the face of a global fashion brand like her mother once did. The modeling and fashion industry has changed and with it comes a new attitude towards it all.
What’s different about Grace from other nepo babies is that she is branching outside her mother’s career. Grace published her own magazine titled, By Grace last June as her senior project through an internship with W Magazine. A second issue with her best friend and model Stella Jones as the cover star is now available.
By Grace is a collection of her own writing and photography of the intriguing people around her. She welcomes her friends to share their work too, helping to show what the new generation of NYC creatives are up to. The overall mood of the magazine is, well, moody, but what else could be expected from almost-twenty-somethings trying to forge their path.
Grace’s best friends, Stella Jones and Lila Moss, were just featured in Vogue’s March Issue as a “model duo”, but I can’t help but think about where Grace fits in. Grace has just as much power from her mother’s popularity as Lila Moss does, but Grace doesn’t utilize it to the same degree. Where is her Vogue Cover? Where is her opening of a runway show?
Grace is different from the rest of the nepo babies filling the scene– she’s making her own life independent of her mom’s.
I’m rooting for Grace, and so should everyone else.