When Scarlett White thinks back on her early childhood, there’s one memory in particular she returns to time and time again.
“I remember my mom had a walk-in wardrobe with pink carpets,” White recalls over Zoom, a backdrop of dorm room bookshelves illuminated by the glow of her laptop screen. “She had these fantastic slip dresses that I remember trying on as a little girl, and shelves of shoes that I would fawn over. I always wanted to wear what she wore.”
Of course, this wasn’t just any mom: White is referring to supermodel Karen Elson, the “red flame” from Oldham, who now has three decades at the top of the fashion industry under her belt. And this wasn’t just any closet. Packed to the rafters with rare vintage finds, couture pieces, and runway looks gifted to Elson by some of the world’s most celebrated designers, it was a treasure trove of fashion history.
“Because I’m so deep in the fashion industry, I never wanted to force my style upon Scarlett—or force fashion upon her at all, really,” Elson says, joining the call from her home in Nashville. (That said, she does remember a phase of dressing White in 1940s-inspired peacoats as a toddler; Steven Meisel was particularly enamored with the look, describing her as looking just like a porcelain doll.)
To this day, the lure of her mom’s closet often proves too strong for White to resist—and as a result, she’s been “exposed to some very nice things,” Elson says, in something of an understatement. “When she became a teenager, I’d head up into Scarlett’s bedroom and go, ‘Oh that’s where the Galliano dress has gone. That’s where the Jean Paul Gaultier top went.’” Elson smiles. “It was really sweet to see her start to play around with fashion though, and find her own style.”
Does White still raid her mom’s closet? “Oh my God, yeah, all the time,” she says, a little bashfully, as Elson proceeds to call her out for wearing a Marc Jacobs cardigan on TikTok that had recently vanished from her own wardrobe. (“It looked good on you, though,” she admits.) Do White’s friends ever get jealous? “Not jealous, but they do ask to borrow [things] a lot,” White says. “Sometimes I let them, but sometimes it’s too special—I can’t just give out her archival runway clothing.”
Adds Elson: “That’s the correct answer.”
White and Elson are speaking a few weeks after their first major fashion shoot as mother and daughter. Photographed for Vogue by Annie Leibovitz and styled by family friend Tabitha Simmons, it look place at the upstate home Elson purchased a year ago with her now-husband Lee Foster, co-owner of Electric Lady Studios. How was it to spend the day together dressing up in glittering fine jewelry? “We had such a blast!” Elson exclaims. “It was so meaningful to do it at our new home. And I was so impressed with Scarlett being a team player on set—it was a proud mom moment…” She cuts herself off to let White pipe up, “because you know I could talk about it at a million miles an hour.”
“I mean, it was beyond cool just to work with Annie,” White adds. “It was amazing to see how her mind works when she’s taking photographs.”
For White, the shoot represents the latest in a series of careful steps into the public eye. The 18-year-old, Elson’s first child with her rock star ex-husband Jack White, spent her childhood in Nashville, largely out of the spotlight. But after moving to New York City for art school—and being repeatedly stopped on the street by model scouts, struck by the alabaster skin she inherited from her mother and the deep brown eyes she inherited from her father—White accepted that a diversion into the fashion industry was all but inevitable.
She made her front row debut at Alessandro Michele’s spring 2025 Valentino show: “We had a blast, we were spoiled rotten,” Elson says of their mother-daughter Parisian sojourn. “It was so much fun—I want to do it again. Note to any brands: You can always fly me and Scarlett out to Paris for a fashion show!” I’m sure they have no shortage of invites, I suggest. “Well, Scarlett has more invites than I do these days,” Elson replies. “It’s fantastic.”
White is still figuring out how to balance the “unpredictable” demands of the fashion industry with her studies—and while Elson is happy to offer advice, her plan was to set her daughter up with a “great team,” then remain relatively hands-off. On forging a path for herself within that business, White says, “I feel very privileged and grateful for the amazing people I get to work with, and who have helped me set boundaries and want to help me build a career as a new model, and not just burn out.”
And she’s taking the gig seriously: Her self-imposed model school has involved studying artist-and-muse relationships from throughout history. “I’ve always been captivated by photographers like Meisel or Peter Lindbergh who mold their models to tell a story,” White says. “I’ve always thought it was a beautiful thing for a photographer to transform a model’s body into a work of art, and that’s the kind of thing I want to be involved in.” Elson is quick to draw a parallel between White’s other creative pursuits—whether making ceramics at college, or playing bass with her dad on his recent No Name tour—and her nascent interest in modeling.
“I think people often write off modeling in so many ways, but it’s been really beautiful to see you getting this education and understanding where modeling fits into the history of art,” Elson says, addressing her daughter. “You’ve helped me view even myself differently through this. Even just sitting here listening to you speak, Scarlett, I’m like, damn, you are a smart kid!”
A stylish one, too: On the subject of her biggest fashion inspirations, White reels off a list of women spanning 1960s French yé-yé girls, old Hollywood stars like Claudette Colbert, and classic pin-ups like Bettie Page. “On top of being a model, a musician, in art school, I think there’s also a little fashion editor in you,” says Elson. “You know how to put outfits together in a way that tells a story—and I’m like, I wish I’d thought of that!”
Those feelings of sartorial admiration are mutual: White delights in relaying her aunt Kate’s memory of hearing Elson’s high heels clacking down the stairs of her Nashville home as she left for the hospital to give birth to White. “I think that sort of encapsulates how she’s always kept it super stylish,” White says.
“I know I tease you about stealing my clothes, but I honestly love it—I really do,” says Elson. “I want Scarlett to have these things. I want her to breathe new life into clothes that I wore and I have memories of, and for her to create her own memories in them.” The thought soon leads to a debate about the virtues of vintage shopping in Manhattan versus Nashville: Elson prefers New York, as the stores are better curated and “I just don’t have the patience anymore to go rummaging through a vintage store, trying to find that one diamond in the rough.” White, however, prefers Nashville: it’s a lot more “personal,” she says, noting that some of her best finds include a Wayne State sweater from the 1950s (her dad studied for a semester there when he was young) and a Patti Smith tee she picked up at a flea market.
At the mention of Patti Smith, Elson beams with a pride so vivid it practically burns through the screen. Clearly, the apple did not fall far from the tree. “I think Scarlett came out hardwired to be a creative—I mean, we were never the athletic family, that’s for sure,” she says. “But I’ve always stressed to Scarlett that creativity is an individual path. Her path is not going to be my path. It’s not going to be her dad’s path. It’s not going to be her brother’s path, or the path of her friends.”
If there’s one lesson that Elson most wants to impress upon her daughter? “Fitting in is so… boring,” Elson says. “To be yourself—that’s the most beautiful thing.”
In this story: hair, Orlando Pita; makeup, Francelle Daly; manicurist, Nori Yamanaka; tailor, Carlos Sanchez. Produced by AL Studio. Set Design: Mary Howard.
