Kate Moss: The Making Of An Ultra-Icon

Harpers Bazaar Arabia

a day ago

If you ask the AI model brain trust how to construct an icon they might very well generate an answer that comes remarkably close to describing Kate Moss
The first thing you need is an insanely rare, utterly unique, instantly recognisable and undeniable talent. In Kate's case it's not her skills as a model, which are now legendary but were initially received with significant scepticism. As the legend goes, Kate was discovered by Sarah Doukas, the founder of Storm Model Management, at JFK Airport in 1988, when she was just 14 years old and travelling back to London from a family vacation. Sarah was struck by Kate's unusual look – waiflike, androgynous, and totally unlike the Supers who were dominating the late '80s fashion scene at the time. Measuring a scant 5' 7' with spindly, slightly bowed legs and that unsettling alien beauty, Kate did not match the moment. In a blind quote that has since become part of the Kate Moss legend, she was allegedly described by a fashion industry insider as 'a cockney kid with crooked teeth and bandy legs.'
Kate's feral oddness was striking, and would become an industry-altering force, shifting fashion's ideal away from in-your-face traditional beauty and towards the more elusive and unconventional, but that's not her super power either. Her super power is her charisma. That unnameable quality she still radiates thirty-plus years after she left Croydon and made her way to central London.
The quality that every single person who first met or worked with her, from Mario Sorrenti to Marc Jacobs to Alexander McQueen have described, in vivid detail, as if they can play that magical moment on tape in their minds forever. 'The moment I saw her, I knew,' John Galliano, who cast Kate in his very first show in 1989, has said. 'She wasn't just a model – she was a character, a presence. You couldn't teach that. You couldn't fake it.'
The second thing you need is extremely good timing. You need your unique talent – whatever it is – to fill an unmet need in the culture's psyche, and to emerge exactly when the culture is starting to search around for its next defining obsession. When Kate showed up, the '80s were nearly over and everything associated with the so-called Decade of Excess felt tired. Power suits and shiny hair and money were out. What appealed now was a kind of elegant grime, reflected in the simplicity of the vintage-inspired slip dress, the easy beauty of clean skin and dirty hair, and, of course, grunge music and the alternative culture that grew around it.
Kate's breakout moment came with the 1990 shoot by Corinne Day for The Face – raw, intimate photos that presented Kate in a stripped-down, vulnerable light, wearing minimal make-up and basic clothes. Kate went on to date Cry Baby and Viper Room-era Johnny Depp.
They were the perfect Gen X couple in matching biker jackets and bedhead, one prettier than the other, depending on the light. She walked in the legendary Marc Jacobs for Perry Ellis 'grunge' show in the autumn of 1992, and became a poster girl for a new articulation of coolness, one defined by attitude as much as by a specific look. 'She was like a magical creature,' Marc has said. 'The minute she walked into a room, she was just… cool. Not trying to be cool. She just was. And it wasn't only the look – it was the attitude, the mystery.'
Whether we're talking about those early Corinne Day images, several of which are now part of the collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, or snaps taken by the legions of paparazzi who have been following Kate for decades, there's something eternally riveting about what comes through the lens of a camera when Kate is in front of it – she gives us something we feel we need. It's the radiant sense of mischief and play she exudes, a permission structure for living a bit more freely, with a bit more beneficent recklessness in your own life. And, of course, it's also the clothes. From the early years of ballet flats and skinny jeans, to the iconic Glastonbury wellies-and-cutoffs, to the breathtakingly simple cream-coloured wedding dress and veil (Galliano, of course) she wore when she married The Kills' Jamie Hince in 2011, Kate has taught generations how to build their own identity using the language of clothes.
The final thing you need is an innate awareness that silence is your superpower. All the great icons know how to shut up. They know to let their work speak for itself. They know that to live a truly wild life, requires– ironically, perhaps – a certain discipline. From the very beginning, Kate Moss had that kind of restraint. Through her myriad ups and downs in the public eye – including most famously the Pete Doherty era where allegedly incriminating photos of her were published in the Daily Mirror – she has stuck very close to the mantra, 'never complain, never explain.' There's an old-worldness to this distinctly modern wild child's relationship with fame. Like a silent film star or a reclusive novelist, she mostly refuses to talk about her (at times) incredibly decadent and interesting life. Instead, she is busy living it.
It's this quality that elevates Kate from fashion superstar to actual rock star. There's something about people who play music that puts them at the top of the famous-person food chain. I've seen a room full of extremely well-known actors fawn over bassists in bands you've barely heard of. It's an intriguing sociological phenomenon. But Kate has always been the exception. She doesn't have to worship rock stars because she is one. She has worked closely with Primal Scream, appearing in the 2003 video for Some Velvet Morning (2003) and duetting (with surprising skill!) with Bobby Gillespie on the song. She's been a part of every major music scene in the UK since the Britpop era, as a muse and creative collaborator.
'The minute she walked into a room, she was just… cool. Not trying to be cool. She just was. And it wasn't only the look – it was the attitude, the mystery'
Marc Jacobs
It's Kate's appearance in one particular music video that perhaps best encapsulates the ineffable quality that has made her an enduring icon. The White Stripes I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself, shot in 2003 and directed by Sofia Coppola, features no scenes of the band at all.
The song is a serrated ballad of sorts, all wrenching guitar, Meg White's beguiling drums, and Jack White's anguished vocals. But all we see in the video is Kate, through Sofia's eye, completely in black and white, pole dancing for an audience of none. It's everything that makes Kate compelling, in one two-minute-and-forty-four-seconds clip. She's beautiful, of course, when we get a glimpse of her from behind her cascading mane of thick blonde hair. But the overall feeling is of being invited into an experience that is intimate and joyful, naughty and innocent.
You keep watching Kate, fixated and enthralled, but you also feel like you can't quite see her. She keeps moving, her face catching the light briefly, then falling into shadow as she tilts her head back and swings herself around, following the rhythm of the music into the next frame. In the end, Kate seems to be dancing for an audience of one. In the end, she seems to be dancing only for herself.
Photography: David Sims. Styling: Emmanuelle Alt. Hair: Paul Hanlon. Make-Up: Yadim. Manicure: Michelle Class. Assistant Stylists: Georgia Bedel, Penelope Vanni. Production: Erin Fee Productions. Casting: Piergiorgio del Moro and Helena Baladino for DM Casting with Alejandra Perez.