The new Primrose Hill set of nepo babies – and their tangled web of famous friends
The excesses of the Primrose Hill set in the Nineties famously revolved around sex, drugs and rock and roll. If you’d walked down a leafy road in north London on the day of Noel Gallagher’s 30th birthday, for instance, you’d have heard the Sex Pistols blaring. Inside the house in question, all hell was breaking loose. Whether the customary supermodels were in attendance, surrounded by lines of cocaine, is not recorded, but it was certainly a wild affair. “I’ve got a coffee table downstairs that holds about four ashtrays,” said Gallagher of his 1995 blow-out. “There must have been 15 people on it [singing] and the police show up and we were going, ‘And I wanna be... anarchy’. [And the police say] ‘Excuse me, sir, could you turn the noise down?’”
Theirs was a time of Britpop and Blair, of hard partying and unbridled hedonism. HQ was “Supernova Heights”, the Nineties party pad on Steele’s Road in Primrose Hill owned by Gallagher and his then wife Meg Matthews. It was frequented by Kate Moss and Dazed and Confused editor Jefferson Hack, Jude Law and Sadie Frost, actors Rhys Ifans, Jonny Lee Miller, Ewan McGregor and Sienna Miller, PR executive Fran Cutler and, of course, Noel’s brother and Oasis bandmate Liam and his wife Patsy Kensit.
Despite the recent Oasis reunion, the Primrose Hill set stopped partying together a long time ago. Well into middle age with grown-up children, they now have different homes and different partners.
And their children are very different, too. Models, influencers and photographers, they have grown up in luxury and are more likely to be seen at high-society soirées than underground parties. Instead of taking drugs, many extol the virtues of yoga and clean living.
Centre of this “Nepo Baby” circle is Noel Gallagher’s daughter, 24-year-old Ana?s. With long platinum-blonde hair, blue eyes and trademark Gen Z low-cut jeans, she has 253,000 followers on Instagram, and describes herself as a “model and photographer”.
Ana?s made headlines back in June this year after she danced to pop anthem Shake It Off alongside Taylor Swift’s boyfriend Travis Kelce in a VIP box at Wembley Stadium. Her social media suggests she loves long walks, books and animals. “Walk more worry less”, one recent Instagram post is captioned, accompanied by a picture series of pastoral landscapes.
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She also regularly posts her “book of the month” – in June it was Claire Keegan’s So Late in the Day, in July, Jessica Mitford’s Hons and Rebels. She has an entire series of pictures on her page dedicated to “Animals” showcasing all sorts of delightfully fluffy creatures: lambs, baby goats and fluffy cockapoos. It’s a far cry from the pictures of her parents and their friends falling out of clubs in their heyday.
Ana?s regularly hangs out with other rock-royalty kids. In June, she was seen at sushi restaurant Nobu with Tigerlily Taylor, daughter of Queen drummer Roger Taylor. And in April, she was posing next to Pixie Geldof, daughter of Bob, at a dinner at St Paul’s Church, in Covent Garden.
There’s also Keith Richards’ granddaughter Ella, Mick Jagger’s daughter Georgia May, and Stella Jones, daughter of The Clash’s Mick.
All can be spotted at high-society events: the Royal Academy Summer Preview, Wimbledon, the V&A Summer Party, the Chelsea Flower Show and the Serpentine Summer Party. Hedonistic parties are no longer “cool”. For the nepo babies, it’s less about cocaine and more about culture.
For 21-year-old Lila Moss, the Burberry model daughter of Kate Moss and Jefferson Hack, the gulf between parent and child is arguably at its widest. With 6.9 million TikTok likes, she posts videos of her dance routines with friends. “If you weren’t here I’d be reading my book in the cafe with my matcha,” she told Vogue when she was in Paris in March. “My friends, and my mum specifically, think it’s very strange that I can come to a cafe or restaurant and just eat alone. I don’t mind being in my own little bubble.” In 2019, she was snapped yawning with best friend Stella Jones following a night out. The contrast with her mother’s hard-core party days, when Moss Sr was known as “The Tank” (because nothing stopped her), could not have been starker.
“Unlike their hedonistic parents, the young Primrose Hill set seem far more polished and focused on their health and wellness,” says former gossip columnist Emily Prescott. “You’re far more likely to find them hooked up to a vitamin IV drip or promoting an insanely expensive wellness retreat in Switzerland rather than looking worse for wear in Soho.”
Then there’s Iris Law, the 23-year-old daughter of Jude Law and Sadie Frost with cropped peroxide hair and a penchant for football shirts. With 772,000 followers on Instagram, she lives a more meditative, plant-based life. Last year, she attended a pottery course in Kyoto, calling it “Time spent throwing and learning”. She posts regularly about her daily fruit yoghurt bowls. “I have a fruit bowl every day for breakfast with my tea”, she says in a recent Tiktok video. “This is frozen baby banana, mango, papaya, and Jamaican apple, and then underneath is coconut yoghurt.” She’s also into milk substitutes, matcha, running and facials.
Prescott says the clean-living lifestyle is not so much a rebellion as a culture shift. “Their parents are at it too: Sadie Frost is now a yoga instructor, while Kate Moss has a whole wellness brand called Cosmoss, which sells ‘calming dusk’ teas for ￡20. Increasingly, celebrities are promoting sober living and smoking has gone out of vogue as well as pub gardens. It may be a case that the social media panopticon means people feel more vulnerable to criticism and feel the pressure to live a ‘clean life’ – but I’m sure it’s not all green juices and yoga poses behind the scenes.”
Connected to the new Primrose Hill set are the Beckham offspring. Ana?s was spotted in a VIP suite at Wimbledon with Romeo Beckham and his then-girlfriend Mia Regan in 2021. Iris, wearing pastel pink wellies and a green sports shirt, was seen with model Mia at Glastonbury in 2022, and Mia and Lila Moss both attended the Royal Academy Summer Party the same year. Burberry is also a common denominator. Romeo, Lila, Iris and Lennon Gallagher, son of Liam and Patsy Kensit, have all modelled for the brand.
But Kate Moss remains, as always, at the centre of everything. Now teetotal, she acts as a bridge between the old guard and the Gen Z crowd; Iris is her goddaughter, while Ana?s describes her as a “second mum”.
Ella Richards is also Kate Moss’s goddaughter. And to make matters more complicated, she is dating Sascha von Bismarck, 29, whose older brother, Nikolai, 37, is dating the elder Moss. But that’s a story for another day.
