The ‘London look’ icon, Kate Moss celebrates her 43rd birthday today. With over twenty years in the spotlight, we have Miss Moss to thank for the rise of skinny jeans and a fervour for leopard print. Today has yet to be declared a public national holiday so for the mean time, The Sybarite celebrates by re-visiting the model’s most stylish and iconic moments.
1990: Discovered by Corinne Day in the very early 90’s, Kate Moss was featured on the front cover of ‘The Face’ as a 15-year-old girl. Looking like a heart-wrenchingly cute adolescent with limbs too long to handle, Kate Moss’ career was launched then and there.
“That’s one of my favorite pictures.” Says Kate Moss, “[Photographer] Corinne [Day] really did try and change the way people saw fashion. She hated what was going on at the time: those kind of pictures of the high-roller kind of women, which she didn’t find attractive at all.”
1992: Photographed for a Calvin Klein campaign with Mark Wahlberg, a fresh-faced 17 year-old Kate Moss oozes confidence in front of the camera.
“That was just really weird for me because we were so different, and he was really famous—it was, like, Marky Mark. I was shy, and having to sit like that on top of a guy who’s muscle-y and hip-hop. I was grunge and more Kurt Cobain, and he was like [in deep voice], ‘Yo, wassup?’ He was nice, though.”
1995: With Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Gala in New York City.
“They took me under their wing for a few years. We had so much fun. They did kind of teach me a lot, really, about how to deal with the way people can treat you and the way you shouldn’t be treated. I lived with them, and that was a lesson in itself, how a young woman can live on her own and have her own driver. I’d never seen that before. They were just very independent women.”
2002: at a Party for Mario Testino in London.
“Pregnant at Mario’s party. Pissed off. I thought he didn’t invite me because I was pregnant, so I turned up anyway. And he was like, ‘Darling, of course I invited you.’ I was like, ‘You didn’t, did you? You’re never going to invite me to any parties!’… I loved [being pregnant]. I loved having a friend with me all the time.”
2005: at the Glastonbury Music Festival in Somerset, England
“That was a good look. That really launched the Hunter Wellies. Now they’re everywhere. But nobody really wore Wellingtons before that to Glastonbury. It was so muddy that year, you had to.”
2006: in a Hologram at an Alexander Mcqueen Fashion Show in Paris
“I wasn’t there at the show because we thought it would be better if I wasn’t. We thought, ‘Well, you could come in disguise,’ like a ghost visiting. So I was in Thailand, and I woke up at like four in the morning the night of the show, so I called and I could hear the applause and the music, and everyone going, ‘Ohhh.’ I never got to see it, which is a shame. He had such a vision.”
2011: With Her Father and Daughter on Her Wedding Day
“My dad looks so worried. He’s got to do a speech. He’s just like, ‘Uhhh, God.’ It was funny. It was a really good speech. And Lila was just so…she’s so beautiful. She was very excited.”