Since being scouted at a New York airport at the age of 14, Kate Moss has enjoyed an illustrious modelling career.
Yet despite her success, the fashion star from Croydon, south London, harbours to this day the emotional scars of being forced to pose naked in a cover shoot for The Face magazine, which was taken by the late photographer Corinne Day in 1990.
‘I still, even after that shoot, I did cry a lot about taking my clothes off with her [Day],’ Moss, 50, says. ‘I really didn’t want to do it.’
She explains: ‘At the time, it was me, Corinne, Drew Jarett, the hairdresser, and Dick Page, the make-up artist. So I would make Drew turn around because he was straight and I was, like, ‘I’m not having him look at me’. I was really shy.
‘I was 15 and topless in a magazine, and I was still in school. Luckily, The Face wasn’t sold in Croydon, so I don’t think anyone really saw it, but they heard about it.’
Since being scouted at a New York airport at the age of 14, Kate Moss has enjoyed an illustrious modelling career
Despite her success, the fashion star from Croydon, south London, harbours to this day the emotional scars of being forced to pose naked in a cover shoot for The Face magazine
Lila Moss walks the runway during the 2024 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show
Moss appears naked in the photograph, protecting her modesty with her hands and a sun hat. In another, she is pictured topless wearing a feathered headdress.
‘At a very young age, I started doing pictures topless and I was very conscious that I have a mole on my right t** and I hated it so much I would cry,’ she says on her friend Bella Freud’s podcast, Fashion Neurosis.
‘I never wanted to be topless. I would cry and I had to get over it because the photographer [Day] would be, like, ‘If you don’t do this, I’m not going to book you for the next job’, so I had to get over it.’
Moss’s daughter Lila, 22, has followed her footsteps into modelling and is signed to her own agency.
While Moss’s shoot with Day, who died of a brain tumour in 2010, remains a ‘painful memory’ for her, she admits that the fashion business has supported her through her difficult moments.
She alludes to the backlash she received in 2005 after the publication of photographs which, a newspaper claimed, showed her snorting drugs at a studio where her then boyfriend Pete Doherty was performing.
Branded ‘Cocaine Kate’, Moss lost her £1million contract with high street chain H&M and booked herself into a rehab clinic.
‘When I had a bit of scandal, I had so much support from people in the fashion business,’ she says. ‘[As] soon as I was able to get back to work, I got booked by everybody. They were, like, ‘No we’re not going to let them cancel you’.’
Gary Lineker’s new venture
It looks like Gary Lineker is continuing to cut back on his workload. The outgoing host of BBC’s Match Of The Day has put his production company Goalhanger Films into voluntary liquidation.
Lineker and co-owner Anthony Pastor resolved to wind up their business late last month and their application was lodged at Companies House yesterday. The firm held £422,100 in retained earnings as of 2022.
It looks like Gary Lineker is continuing to cut back on his workload
St Paul’s VAT ploy
What’s going on at St Paul’s, the exclusive London school where fees for boarders are a ticklish £47,000-a-year?
I’m told that, displaying an adroitness in keeping with its superb academic record, it’s turned adversity to advantage by claiming back £30million in VAT from the taxpayer – a ploy made possible by the Budget, which slapped the tax on school fees. St Paul’s has splashed the cash in recent years, spending £114million on a redevelopment in the first phase of its ‘renewal campaign’. But asked whether it has now burned through a full £150million and can, accordingly, claim back £30million in VAT, the school remained silent.
Philip’s confidante meets the new Duke
She wasn’t born into the aristocracy but Countess Mountbatten of Burma has always displayed ‘old school’ stoicism, notably when her husband Norton Knatchbull left her for glamorous Genie McWeeney, widow of baronet Sir Nicholas Nuttall, in 2010. He returned four years later.
This week Penny – as she is known to friends – welcomed the Duke of Edinburgh to Hampshire. Her bond with the previous duke, her carriage-driving companion Prince Philip, was summarised by Natascha McElhone, who portrays the Countess in The Crown, as ‘a ferocious friendship’.
The Duke of Edinburgh (left) is welcomed by Penelope Knatchbull, Countess Mountbatten of Burma
Buffett will bow out with ballad
Warren Buffett has recorded a duet of My Way with Paul Anka that will be his swansong. The American businessman, 94, whose fortune is estimated at $116billion, is a friend of crooner Anka and requested a special favour from him. Buffett asked the Diana singer to perform with him on a cover of the Frank Sinatra ballad. ‘He’s going to play it at his funeral,’ Anka says.
Craig Revel Horwood’s debut album
Strictly by popular demand? Craig Revel Horwood claims he recorded his debut album, Revelations: Songs Boys Don’t Sing, because of requests from fans. ‘It was basically people asking me, ‘Have you got an album that we could listen to?’ says the Strictly Come Dancing judge. ‘And I went, ‘Actually, no I don’t’.’ His only other recordings are a 1980s ad for Kentucky Fried Chicken and one for Macleans toothpaste.
Poppy really is runway ready! unusual airport couture
The model, 38, was spotted at a departure lounge in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday night still in an embellished gown
Similar dresses by the designer sell for more than £5,000
What do you wear to the airport? A favourite pair of jeans, or perhaps your comfiest tracksuit bottoms?
Poppy Delevingne, by contrast, prefers to travel in style.
The model, 38, was spotted at a departure lounge in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday night still in the embellished gown she had worn to Elie Saab’s fashion show that evening.
Similar dresses by the designer sell for more than £5,000. Poppy is courting billionaire Archie Keswick, who should be able to keep her in the style to which she is accustomed.
