Thanks to business’s growing enthusiasm for older models, she seems to be getting more, not less, successful. She has been on a cereal box, featured in a Beyoncé video and starred in a campaign for Virgin America. Once you have seen her unusual face, you find yourself recognising it in adverts.
Today, she is sitting in a pool of bright winter sunlight on the patio of Next Door, Kimbal’s latest venture, in Longmont, Colorado. It is the day before Thanksgiving and tomorrow 30 members of the Musk family will gather for a meal Kimbal is cooking at his home in nearby Boulder.
He, on the other side of the table, has his mother’s easy smile. After starting two technology companies with Elon – Zip2 and PayPal – in 2004 he became a founding father of the farm-to-table movement. He has built 13 restaurants since then and has more on the way. They specialise in unprocessed, locally sourced foods.