Who is Elon Musk's mother and why is she a hit on the New York catwalk?

BarcelonaWhile Elon Musk continues to make headlines for his important role within the Trump administration, his mother, Maye Musk, a dietician and model, was one of the stars of New York Fashion Week. Challenging the usual ageism of the fashion industry, Musk was one of the models who participated in the fashion show of the Chinese brand Juzui to present the collection Winter blooms whisperingMusk, 76, with more than five decades of experience in the world of modelling, appeared at the event sporting her characteristic grey-almost-white hair and was in charge of closing the show. This is not the first time that Musk has worked for the Chinese brand and, in fact, Juzui's creative director, Taoray Wang, was full of praise for her: "As a person and as a woman, I adore and respect her."

The model wore a white fur coat and a long black dress with metallic accents. Born in Canada and raised in South Africa, she began her career as a model when she appeared at the Miss South Africa pageant in 1969 at the age of 21, where she was a finalist. A year later she married Errol Musk, an engineer she met in high school. Together they had three children – one of them the now famous Elon Musk – but they divorced nine years later (they had a legal battle that lasted a decade and she accused him of emotional and physical abuse). Shortly after the separation, Elon decided to live with his father because he had "the Encyclopedia Britannica and a computer," according to Maye Musk herself, who claims that at that time she did not have the financial resources to have the things that fascinated her son Elon.

Between the 70s and 90s, Maye Musk specialized in bridal fashion. In South Africa, Canada and the United States, she was chosen to showcase fashion designed for mothers of the brides. The model achieved worldwide fame at the age of 69, when the cosmetics brand Cover Girl chose her as an ambassador. From then on, she continued to receive advertising contracts.

During her time at New York Fashion Week, she has avoided talking about her son. Even so, some of her political statements in recent times have raised a storm. During the 2024 presidential elections, she made a post on X in which she recommended that Republicans vote several times using false names because, in her opinion, the Democrats were doing something similar "using illegal people", a statement for which she did not provide any evidence. After being advised by her lawyers, she made a second tweet in which she asked her followers to ignore the post in which she encouraged electoral fraud.