Vivian Wilson on Modeling, Privilege and Bringing Down the Oligarchy

She disappears, leaving me to make pleasant-awkward small discuss along with her publicist. Moments later, she reappears with a mug. The caffeine hits. Vivian Wilson is in the room.

The viral lore

To perceive Vivian’s rise, we’ve got to look again at 2022. Turning 18, she filed to legally change her identify and gender, stating she now not wished to be associated to her organic father “in any way, shape, or form.” The non-public paperwork leaked.

“Then two years later, this guy [Musk] on a podcast called me dead and I was not having it,” she explains. “So I made a response on Threads [Meta’s rival to X, which, understandably, Vivian does not use]and it went mega viral. “Everything took off from there.”

The podcast in query was hosted by right-wing former professor Jordan Peterson. After Musk informed Peterson he was “tricked” into signing transition paperwork, claiming his youngster was “killed by the woke mind virus,” Vivian responded by way of TikTook, letting the world know she “looks pretty good for a dead bitch.”

Naturally, her merch line is called “Evil Woke Mind Virus” in tribute.

Vivian has beforehand claimed Musk was a hardly ever current and unsupportive father throughout her childhood. Coming out as trans to her mom, writer Justine Wilson, was a vastly totally different expertise: She supposed to be shocked earlier than merely saying, “Yeah, honey. Okay.”

Before January 2025 Teen Vogue cowl catapulted Vivian into additional visibility, she studied at Japan’s Komazawa University, intending to show. “I slept on a futon because the bed seemed hard to set up and I thought, I’m not going to be here forever.”

“For a while I was this niche H-list micro celebrity, just on Threads posting about politics and trans stuff. That cover absolutely changed my life.”

Now, her diploma has been paused. “I started getting modeling opportunities, which I’m very grateful for, and now that’s how I pay my rent.”

Walking her personal path

Fashion Week is a brutal new frontier. “It’s an endurance test of your capabilities,” Vivian muses. “I was practicing in shoes that were too small and fucked up one of my toes. Not fun. But I don’t think anyone leaves Fashion Week with toes fully intact.”

Off the runway, her type is unpretentious. “Consumerism is getting out of hand; most of my clothes I’ve had for a long-ass time,” she appears round her bed room. “God, I need to do my laundry, but yeah, I don’t buy a lot of clothes.”

“I kind of dress like a goblin,” she laughs, crowning her aesthetic as a “wine-drunk aunt who has exactly two cats and a parakeet.” “I wear the same shirt constantly, to the point where my publicist brings it up all the goddamn time! But I’ll amp it up for the cameras or if I’m doing drag, which is my favorite thing.”

gown Tory Burchskirt and sneakers stylist’s personal.

Last 12 months, she made her “Vivllainous” drag debut as an “oil spill” in a poisonous relationship with an oil CEO, at a authorized fundraiser supporting immigrants. But this confidence has been hard-won. “I was made fun of for my weight as a kid, but looking back on photos now…I was not even chubby. I was just born in Los Angeles.”

“That never really leaves you,” Vivian continues. “It has very much affected me. I was a very modest person. I wouldn’t like to show my body off at all and I always got super uncomfortable at the thought.”

An even underwear marketing campaign, a type of (literal) publicity remedy, modified every thing. “TomboyX came along and said, ‘We’re doing an underwear shoot; we will pay you this amount of money,’ and I was like, ‘I love this company; I want to further my modeling career; this is the step I should take’ and I think I kind of ate that up.”

When I ask how she’s navigated the vulnerability of opening her physique as much as public remark via her chosen line of labor, Vivian admits “there were a few things that got to me. It’s the internet’s favorite hobby to comment on women’s bodies. Especially trans women’s bodies, depending on how feminine or masculine or AFAB [assigned female at birth] or DFAB [designated female at birth] or whatever the fuck it is you look at. Which…I’m over.” So much so, she has also since shot for Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty lingerie brand (and again, ate).

Still, while Vivian carves her own path, the internet stubbornly drags her past into the present. Is it hard consistently being referenced as “Elon’s kid”? “There’s not a lot I can do about it, so who cares? It’s a part of my story, but it surely’s not the way forward for my story.”

She pauses, laughing. “The media training is finally [working].…[My team] were like, ‘Girl, we need to get you media trained!’ and I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to!’ They were like, ‘You should not answer this question.’”

Asked how she processes negative family-related comments, she answers honestly: “I do not. Which might be not the morally or politically right reply. But [to quote Kourtney Kardashian’s response to her sister’s extreme response to losing an earring] it’s extremely ‘Kim, there’s folks which might be dying!'”

Fighting the good battle

This perspective—that greater injustices are at play and should be the focal point—is in part shaped by the extreme wealth Vivian was born into and her choice to reject it. “It was a very strange experience, very isolating.…The upper class have their own private schools, social circles, and whatever.”

She initially attended Ad Astra, a secretive school on the SpaceX campus, before transferring to Crossroads, a traditional hub for LA’s elite.

“I have unlearned a huge amount, but even as a child, I was like, ‘This is a bit gauche,’” she reflects. “I bear in mind being very younger and seeing homelessness and feeling sick to my abdomen. People would get on me for being like a dramatic little youngster. But no, I used to be proper to be a dramatic little shit about that.”

Vivian also recalls observing a “level of detachment from reality itself, in favor of wealth and this illusion that you deserve it while people are sleeping on the streets… Oh, and also Santa Claus is real.’” But, she adds with self-awareness, “I also know that, like, I was a rich kid; “I should not be reading anyone on materialism.”

Has immense wealth warped folks round her? “Absolutely sure. I’ve seen that shit firsthand. It will change you, and the need for energy corrupts folks from inside. It is cartoonish. Achieving that and wanting extra is a endless cycle of greed and gluttony, the place nothing is sufficient and you type of go insane. It turns you into somebody totally different. Which is actually certainly one of my greatest fears.”

When I suggest that humor seems to be a primary defense mechanism when it comes to more difficult subjects, Vivian’s eyes mock widen. “That is so impolite so that you can fully clock my complete shit like that on a Tuesday morning at 11:09 am,” she laughs, before becoming semi-serious: “Is it a response to speaking about troublesome topics? Yes, clearly. Cat’s out of the bag with that one.”

She credits queer culture and Discord servers for her impeccable comedic timing. “I’m not the greatest at speaking about sure topics, particularly uncomfortable ones. It’s each unconscious and acutely aware. I do that all the time, particularly in my private life,” she says, before caveating she has no mental health advice to share beyond “remedy is sweet” and muses that she should probably pick it up again. “Life is extra bearable when you do not take something significantly. The world is a circus; simply turn into a clown. That is unnecessary. Whatever.”

Behind the scenes, she stays fiercely non-public. “I’m fairly introverted and chronically on-line. I do not suppose folks would guess that. On a typical day, I’m most likely enjoying video video games, sketching, doomscrolling. I like languages, so perhaps watching one thing in French.” Romance is similarly off the table right now. “I’m not on any relationship apps. I made positive to delete that after I acquired well-known. Y’all are by no means catching me slipping,” she laughs. “I do not need romance; it is scary. I wish to develop extra earlier than entering into one other relationship.”

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But publicly, she is prepared for a battle. As the urge for food for elite accountability emerges, Vivian—the final insider turned outsider—hasn’t held again. She lately posted on Threads relating to emails in the Epstein files about Musk holidaying in St. Barth’s and apparently wanting to go to Epstein’s non-public island, noting they match his personal reminiscence of being away as a household at the moment. She has supplied to help authorities nonetheless she will, regardless of security issues.

The idea of ​​a trans woman tearing down the tech overlord dynasty she was born into feels like blockbuster fiction, but how does the imagined hero at the center of it all picture that playing out? “Bringing down the oligarchy could be tea, however I do not know if that is possible for a 21-year-old. I’m simply residing my life and talking out on points which might be vital to me.”

As her influence and wealth now creeps up through her own making, Vivian hovers to reflect on the irony. “I do not really need energy. I wished to be a instructor,” she pauses. “I guess I A.M gaining power.…It’ll be a testament to my character as to what I do with it.”

As our call wraps, I leave assured and with the impression she’ll use it wisely…and excited to see what comes next.

Lead image: Dress Sandy Liang. Hair clips (worn on dress) Blessed Rydbacken.

Cosmopolitan UK editor-in-chief: Claire Hodgson. Hair by Ginger Leigh Ryan for R+Co. Makeup by Chloe Grae for MAC Cosmetics.