Juelz Smith has been called a “nepo baby,” but as a professional model, the 20-year-old has been challenged in his profession.
Smith, who’s the son of Solange and Roc Nation talent manager Daniel Smith Sr., gave his take on the nepotism conversation in a new Teen Vogue profile. During Paris Fashion Week, he walked for LUAR, KidSuper and 3.Paradis.
“I’m not going to say more difficult,” Smith began when asked about being from a famous family, which includes his aunt Beyoncé and grandmother Tina Knowles. “I’m going to say it does open a lot of doors when it comes to brands reaching out and stuff like that, but I do think from a model standpoint, like other models, it causes a little static because they see [me] like, ‘All right, cool, who is this new kid on the block?’ You feel me?”
Smith continued, “So I think it plays both sides. I don’t think it’s a negative or a positive. There’s more doors open for sure, but there’s also like, ‘Oh, this is just a nepo baby. This is a nepo kid.'”
“When in reality I am going to do the same exact process that everybody else is doing, but people don’t know that. They don’t see behind the scenes, they only see what it is.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Smith shared that his earlier ambition was to be an NBA player, which changed when he caught the model bug while interning at LUAR.
“Raul’s [Lopez] been a family friend since I was a kid,” he explained. “That’s one of my mom’s closest friends, and so my mom was just like, ‘You should step your feet into the fashion world.’ And I think Raul was the perfect introduction.”
On his first LUAR runway show, which his aunt and grandmother famously attended during New York Fashion Week last February, Smith said his “phone didn’t stop really dinging” for a week. “It was a pretty hectic five days, and then I had to turn around and do Versace a week after that, so I had to lock back in.”
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