Vivian Wilson is not your average 21-year-old. By the time you read this, she’ll have not long finished walking for Gucci at Milan Fashion Week – prepped for by strutting the garden path of the LA home she shares with three friends. Alongside her modelling work, Wilson is a rising cultural commentator, transgender rights activist and has her own merch line. She also happens to be the estranged daughter of the world’s richest man: Elon Musk.
For the unacquainted, Musk (CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and owner of X) proves money cannot make you funny or likeable. Vivian, in contrast, is both of those things.
On a rainy Tuesday night for me in Essex and a sunny LA morning for Vivian, she appears on our video call in a pale pink tracksuit, coughing, after missing our previously scheduled call due to sickness. She declines my offer to reschedule again, and initially, I’m concerned about her muted answers. “I’m going to go get another coffee, if you don’t mind. I just woke up,” she explains. “My brain is not turned on yet. I can’t like, activate the neurons or whatever.”
She disappears, leaving me making pleasant-awkward small talk with her press officer. Moments later, she reappears with a mug. The caffeine hits. Vivian Wilson is in the room.
The viral lore
To understand Vivian's rise, we have to look back at 2022. Turning 18, she filed to legally change her name and gender, stating she no longer wished to be related to her biological father "in any way, shape, or form." The private documents 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.”
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The podcast in question was hosted by the right-wing former professor, Jordan Peterson. After Musk told Peterson he was “tricked” into signing transition documents, claiming his child was “killed by the woke mind virus”, Vivian responded via TikTok, letting the world know she “looks pretty good for a dead bitch.” *Cue hair flip*
Naturally, her merch line is called 'Evil Woke Mind Virus' in tribute.
Vivian has previously claimed Musk was a rarely present and unsupportive father during her childhood. Coming out as trans to her mother, author Justine Wilson, was a vastly different experience; she pretended to be surprised before simply saying, “Yeah, honey. Okay.”
Before a January 2025 Teen Vogue cover catapulted Vivian into further visibility, she studied at Japan's Komazawa University, intending to teach. “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 degree has been paused. “I started getting modelling opportunities, which I’m very grateful for, and now that’s how I pay my rent.”
Walking her own 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 style is unpretentious. “Consumerism is getting out of hand, most of my clothes I've had for a long ass time,” she looks around her bedroom. “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 favourite thing.”
Last year, she made her ‘Vivllanious’ drag debut as an ‘oil spill' in a toxic relationship with a petrol CEO, at a legal 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 inclusive underwear campaign, a form of (literal) exposure therapy, changed everything. “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 modelling 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 body up to public comment through her chosen line of work, Vivian admits “there were a few things that got to me. It's the internet's favourite 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. 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 much I can do about it, so who cares? It’s part of my story, but it’s not the future of 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 don't. Which is probably not the morally or politically correct answer. But [to quote Kourtney Kardashian’s response to her sister’s extreme response to losing an earring] it's very ‘Kim, there's people that are dying!’.”
Fighting the good fight
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 remember being very young and seeing homelessness and feeling sick to my stomach. People would get on me for being like a dramatic little child. But no, I was right to be a dramatic little shit about that.”
Vivian also recalls observing a “level of detachment from reality itself, in favour 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 lecturing anyone on materialism.”
Has immense wealth warped people around her? “Absolutely yes. I have seen that shit firsthand, it will change you, and the desire for power corrupts people from within. It is cartoonish. Achieving that and wanting more is a never ending cycle of greed and gluttony, where nothing is enough and you kind of go insane. It turns you into someone different. Which is honestly one of my biggest fears.”
When I suggest that humour seems to be a primary defence mechanism when it comes to more difficult subjects, Vivian’s eyes mock widen. “That is so rude for you to completely clock my entire shit like that on a Tuesday morning at 11:09 AM,” she laughs, before becoming semi-serious: “Is it a response to talking about harder subjects? Yes, obviously. Cat's out of the bag with that one.”
She credits queer culture and Discord servers for her impeccable comedic timing. “I am not the best at talking about certain subjects, especially uncomfortable ones. It's both unconscious and conscious. I do this all the time, especially in my personal life,” she says, before caveating she has no mental health advice to share beyond ‘therapy is good’ and muses that she should probably pick it up again. “Life is more bearable when you don't take anything seriously. The world is a circus, just become a clown. That makes no sense. Whatever.”
Behind the scenes, she remains fiercely private. “I'm pretty introverted and chronically online. I don't think people would guess that. [On a typical day I’m] probably playing video games, sketching, doom scrolling. I like languages, so maybe watching something in French.” Romance is similarly off the table right now. “I'm not on any dating apps, I made sure to delete that when I got famous. Y'all are never catching me slipping,” she laughs. “I don't want romance, it’s scary. I would like to grow more before getting into another relationship.”
But publicly, she is ready for a fight. As the appetite for elite accountability surges, Vivian – the ultimate insider-turned-outsider – hasn't held back. She recently posted on Threads regarding emails in the Epstein files about Musk holidaying in St. Barth’s and apparently wanting to visit Epstein’s private island, noting they match her own memory of being away as a family at that time. She has offered to assist authorities however she can, despite safety concerns.
The idea of a trans woman tearing down the tech overlords dynasty she was born into feels like blockbuster fiction – but how does the imagined hero at the centre of it all picture that playing out? “Bringing down the oligarchy would be tea but I don’t know if that's feasible for a 21-year-old, I’m just living my life and speaking out on issues that are important to me.”
As her influence and wealth now creeps up through her own making, Vivian hovers to reflect on the irony. “I don't really want power, I wanted to be a teacher,” she pauses. “I guess I am 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.
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Photography: Natalie Tauger; Styling: Natalie Tauger; Editor in Chief: Claire Hodgson; Hair: Ginger Leigh Ryan for R+Co; Makeup: Chloe Grae for MAC Cosmetics; Creative Director: Samantha Adler; Senior Entertainment Director: Maxwell Losgar; Visual Director: Scott Lacey; Senior Visual Editor: Emily Adar; Associate Visual Editor: Aily Zeltser
Jennifer Savin is Cosmopolitan UK's multiple award-winning Features Editor, who was crowned Digital Journalist of the Year for her work tackling the issues most important to young women. She regularly covers breaking news, cultural trends, health, the royals and more, using her esteemed connections to access the best experts along the way. She's grilled everyone from high-profile politicians to A-list celebrities, and has sensitively interviewed hundreds of people about their real life stories. In addition to this, Jennifer is widely known for her own undercover investigations and campaign work, which includes successfully petitioning the government for change around topics like abortion rights and image-based sexual abuse. Jennifer is also a published author, documentary consultant (helping to create BBC’s Deepfake Porn: Could You Be Next?) and a patron for Y.E.S. (a youth services charity). Alongside Cosmopolitan, Jennifer has written for The Times, Women’s Health, ELLE and numerous other publications, appeared on podcasts, and spoken on (and hosted) panels for the Women of the World Festival, the University of Manchester and more. In her spare time, Jennifer is a big fan of lipstick, leopard print and over-ordering at dinner. Follow Jennifer on Instagram, X or LinkedIn.
