Kate, J?adore!

So Ms. Moss, one of fashion’s greatest muses turns 40 today. I, for one, have long been a fan of the Croydon girl-gone-supermodel since her debut. I had the above Dolce and Gabbana ad on the cover of my school homework notebook in 1992 (when that was ones? only opportunity to showcase your personality and interests whilst in a convent school!). I bought each issue of The Face and Vogue and studied every single image contained within their covers. I was a mega-fan of the original Supers (still am), I loved their glamour, their power and their transformations as they went from campaign to campaign.

But Kate, was different from The Supers, no less super, but more kooky, more original, less likely to fit into the model template – she didn’t have perfect teeth (and to her credit she never fixed them), she didn’t have the Amazonian dimensions the others had – but she had something else. She had rawness. She was the champion of the beautiful underdog. All her shots invited the new direction. Between herself, Corinne Day, Mario Testino and the marketing people at Calvin Klein, they heralded a new look. Yes, that, in it’s turn, became what was captioned ?heroin chic? but that was just a phase leading to the new ideals of beauty and style – less manipulated, less ‘done?. Natural was in. Grunge was born. We lapped up her style, and the cycle continued on?.

The fash-pack were the creatives, dreamers, risk-takers and visionaries of the time and Kate Moss was central to that. More than twenty years later, she still is.

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

Ode – Arthur O?Shaughnessy

@elliebalfe