Vivian Jenna Wilson Is ‘Born to Disobey’

Fashion, rebellion and a very queer refusal to behave

Vivian Jenna Wilson is turning fashion, queer visibility and rebellion into a statement with Desigual’s new Autumn 2026 campaign, Born to Disobey.

The 22-year-old transgender model and public figure has never seemed particularly interested in being quiet. Now that attitude sits at the centre of a campaign mixing fashion, identity, technology and an increasingly urgent message about what it means to be visibly queer.

The campaign deliberately plays with the tension between human creativity and artificial intelligence. Wilson appears alongside a robot, DESI 84, in imagery designed to question AI’s growing role in creative industries. Speaking to People, she criticised the idea that technology can simply replace human creativity, arguing that art depends on emotion and lived experience in ways machines cannot reproduce.

But underneath the fashion campaign sits something more personal — and considerably more political.

Vivian Wilson on queer community: ‘You are not alone’

Wilson has increasingly used her public profile to speak about being transgender and about the importance of queer people finding one another. In an interview published alongside the campaign, she described LGBTQ+ community and support networks as especially important in the current political climate, while encouraging queer people to participate politically as the US approaches November’s midterm elections.

Her message is not simply “be rebellious because rebellion looks cool”. She draws a distinction between the aesthetics of disobedience and the real work of changing political systems, pointing instead towards activism, protest and collective action.

That makes Born to Disobey an unusually appropriate slogan for her.

Wilson has also spoken about the strange timeline many queer people experience while growing up: the teenage experimentation, self-discovery and freedom that others take for granted can sometimes arrive later, after coming out or finally finding an environment where being yourself feels possible. Fashion, she says, helped her build confidence in the way she presents herself to the world.

And perhaps that is where the campaign becomes most interesting.

For queer people, disobedience has rarely meant rebellion simply for the sake of causing trouble. Sometimes it is refusing the version of yourself that somebody else has decided is acceptable. Sometimes it means wearing the clothes you were told were not for you, loving the person you were told not to love, or saying your own name loudly enough that other people eventually have to use it.

More than somebody’s famous daughter

Coverage of Wilson inevitably continues to frame her through her relationship with her father, Elon Musk. But with every campaign, interview and public appearance, that framing feels increasingly inadequate.

She is establishing a public identity that belongs to her — fashion model, queer voice, political commentator and, increasingly, a recognisable figure for a generation of young trans people navigating visibility in an extraordinarily polarised moment.

That does not mean every queer person has to become an activist. Visibility should never become another obligation imposed on LGBTQ+ people.

But Wilson’s message contains something worth keeping: find your people, build community and don’t allow somebody else’s discomfort to write your life for you.

Born to disobey? For queer people, we’ve had quite a lot of practice.