Kate Moss turns 50, which can really mean only one thing: time to consider everything she is, everything she means and everything she’s worn; all of which I’ll attempt without once deploying the words ‘icon’ or ‘iconic’, because they’ve been used to abstraction lately, literally to the point of meaning nothing at all, though that’s also a shame, because if anyone is – Kate Moss is.
I’d love to be able to tell you precisely when I first became aware of her. Love to tell you how I spotted that 1990 Corinne Day The Face cover shoot of her, aged just 16, in a feathered headdress (looking like the embodiment of sweet, sunny, summer) and also in a pink vest and pants surrounded by fairy lights (looking like the embodiment of cool, careless, glamour). That I gasped at her incandescent loveliness, realised instantly I was gazing at the future of – not just supermodel-dom, but: the broader cultural moment! That I popped the mag in Perspex because I recognised it as a collector’s item – and Moss as a star.
But I did not. All I can tell you is there was a time I’d never heard of her – then a time when she was everywhere and everything, a touchpoint, an invaluable, unfailing reference on style and lifestyle, the clothes I wanted to wear and the thrills I wanted to pursue. A glittering, incontestable force; a reason to feel good about being British, because she was, which made the rest of us cooler, naughtier, wilder, more glamorous, more fun, purely by association. A founding member – ringleader, even – of the Primrose Hill set, the unutterably beautiful crowd of models, actors and musicians who lived in London’s most picturesque postcode, a set that also included Oasis’s Gallagher brothers, Noel and Liam, Liam’s wife Patsy Kensit, Jude Law and then-wife Sadie Frost, and who, between them, established the pace for everything gorgeous and decadent and fun in late ’90s London.
Kate was ground zero on the hottest gossip in town, the most frantic speculation; who was she dating, where and when, and what was she wearing while she dated them? The rumours ran wild and unfettered and only ever served to build on her glorious mystery, not to mention her capacity to sell her every look, to anybody. For example: was she really told off by the management of the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc for wearing a bikini in the hallways and trashing the room she shared with then- boyfriend Johnny Depp? And: what _really_happened at her The Beautiful And Damned-themed 30th birthday party, the January 2004 one hosted at Claridge’s, to which she turned up with spiral curls, in a full-length midnight blue sequinned gown once worn by Britt Ekland to the premiere of The Man With The Golden Gun? (I mean, the word ‘org y’ was bandied around afterwards, but: seriously?)
Did the journalist Jefferson Hack – whom she’d date in the early stages of the 2000s, with whom she’d have a daughter Lila Grace, in 2002 – really introduce himself to her by saying, ‘You smell like pee’? What on earth went down between Moss and Pete Doherty, the rock star who embodied the jaded glamour and dangerous excess of the mid aughts, with whom she created one of the most enduring, evocative images of the Glastonbury festival (her, bare legged in a long sleeve gold micro-dress, heavy belt that almost dipped beneath the hem on the frock, and mud-splattered wellies); a pic so achingly cool it almost made me want to attend? Ground zero too on scandal; I can still remember the visceral shock I felt on walking past a 2005 newsstand and seeing for the first time (oh, the days before social media!) a tabloid cover image that purported to show Moss taking cocaine. Can also remember how intrigued – tickled, almost – I was to discover, a year later, that she enjoyed one of the most lucrative periods of her modelling career in the aftermath of that story.
But then, of course she did! As I’ve said, Moss is one of those rare, insanely commercially valuable quantities who can make anything seem like the most desirable, impulse-purchasable thing you have ever, ever seen, just by drinking it, applying it to her face, chucking it on, creased and careless like it’s nothing at all, yet instantly, it’s everything! Diet Coke, diaphanous slip dresses, her new (actually, genuinely good) wellbeing range Cosmoss (shout out to the cleanser from this skincare obsessive); gladiator sandals and waistcoats and that perfect, multiple-shades-of-blue, puff-sleeve vintage dress she wore just before she married rock star Jamie Hince in the Cotswolds in 2011 (I’ve been trying to find something like it ever since).
When she switched to skinny jeans, so did we all; when she started yanking heeled knee boots over the top of ’em for long- legged lolloping round town – so did we all! Hardly surprising, then, that we queued around the damn block for the launch of her 2007 collaboration with Topshop. Me? I bought the lemon one-shoulder chiffon dress, a deconstructed leather jacket with leopard-print lining and the (famous) red pansy-print wraparound mini. No idea where any of it is now, which is a shame, because I’ve just checked, and that pansy frock is currently posted for sale on a vintage site for £179.99! I can’t have spent more than 60 quid on it back in ’07.
When I interviewed her for Grazia – in Barcelona, in, I think 2012, for a campaign she’d shot with Mango – she asked me what I’d be wearing to the dinner she was hosting that evening. When I said: jeans and a tuxedo jacket, probably, she said, ‘Oh no! I was going to wear a tuxedo jacket!’ I thought (but didn’t quite dare say), literally the only reason I own a tuxedo jacket is because you did first, Kate.
Point is, my word, Moss makes clothes not only look good, but also: like you might just have a chance of replicating a touch of her magic, of her glorious vibe, if you, too, were to wear something similar. Sure, she’s a supermodel – arguably the supermodel – but there is a rare relatability in her. It’s like she’s the coolest, naughtiest girl in your school, the most charismatic, the prettiest, the one all the boys fancy and all the girls long to be mates with, the one around whom all the best rumours revolve, the one who made your day, week, month, year that time by saying she liked your denim jacket... But she is, still, a girl in your school.
So happy birthday Kate Moss, you... ah, I give in! You icon! I cannot wait to see what you do next. Just as, pertinently, I cannot wait to see what you wear.