Like his perpetually Oscar-winning dad, Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis is smart, sensitive, heavily inked, and addicted to his art. And, as the fashion and music worlds are discovering, he wears his soulfulness well.
In April, Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis's beautiful midriff-bearing daughter Lily-Rose, 16, emerged from obscurity in the front row at Chanel's NYC reshowing of its Métiers d'Art Collection, much to the internet's delight. Three months later, at the house's Couture Fashion Week show in Paris, Daniel Day-Lewis and French actress Isabelle Adjani's son Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis debuted, to equal media fanfare. And guess what? The 20-year-old musician-model's cameo in the notoriously elaborate production wasn't a favor called in by Mom or Dad—at least, not exactly.
"I stopped to get coffee across from the Chanel studio, and I saw Karl Lagerfeld," Gabriel-Kane says. He halts to warn me: "It gets crazier." Feeling emboldened because his parents are friendly with the designer and he "spent some time at Karl's house in the south of France" when he was 10, Day-Lewis walked right up to Lagerfeld—"he probably thought I was some crazy fashion fan"—and reintroduced himself. "When I told him who I was he couldn't believe it," Day-Lewis says, in a tone of shocked gratitude. "He was like, 'Wow, you've really grown into yourself. I would love to have you in the Chanel show.'" Two weeks later Day-Lewis was escorting Julianne Moore down the casino-themed runway toward a roulette table (where, incidentally, Lily-Rose Depp was gambling).
Since being anointed by Lagerfeld, Day-Lewis has dropped his first single, "Ink in My Veins," a pop ballad (he sings and plays piano). "Most people assume it's about my tattoos," he says. (He has so many he's lost count.) "But it's about the therapeutic value that music holds for me and the release I get when I write a song."
