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‘People tend to lose their inhibitions’
LEAH WOOD AT KATE MOSS’S ‘BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED’ 30TH BIRTHDAY PARTY
For her 30th birthday, on Jan 16 2004, supermodel Kate Moss hosted a party in London with the theme “The Beautiful and the Damned”, alluding to the F Scott Fitzgerald novel set in the decadent world of 1920s New York.
In keeping with the theme, women wore slinky slip dresses and fur coats. Moss wore a long blue sequinned dress and her hair was a mass of curls. “Kate looked stunning on the night,” recalls Leah Wood, artist daughter of Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood. She was 22 when she attended the party.
Most of Moss’s usual crowd were there, including fellow model Naomi Campbell, actress Sadie Frost and the designers Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen, but Gwyneth Paltrow and 130 other high-profile guests also made an appearance.
A select few started the party in Moss’s seventh-floor suite in Claridge's before heading to the main event at a four-storey house in Marylebone, owned by Serena Rees, owner of luxury lingerie line Agent Provocateur.
“I remember it being in this grand building with lots of marble and stone everywhere. It was all empty on the inside because I think the owner had cleared the house for the party,” Wood recalls. There were blue strip lights in some of the rooms, hidden in the panelling of the walls, and rose petals scattered here and there. Love Hearts sweets with the inscription “With Love From Kate” were dotted around.
Wood arrived at 8pm with her parents and two of her brothers. “It was quite busy when we got there and there was excitement in the air because Kate was quite a party girl.”
Waiters in uniform served Cristal and Krug champagne to the guests, who were milling about and talking, a few nibbling on canapés. “There were lots of people chatting away and dancing,” Wood recalls. “I was quite shy when I was in my 20s, so I was just hanging around my brothers and taking it all in, really. I was kind of in awe of it because it was such a big bash. “I remember sitting by myself at one point, just looking around going, ‘This is insane’. I was used to going on tour with my dad and seeing different people of influence, but I just remember sitting there by myself and going, ‘Wow, this is really a good party.’ “With alcohol and parties, people tend to lose their inhibitions, so as the night went on, there was lots more dancing and people were laughing and smoking and just enjoying it.” Wood does not recall seeing a lot of the birthday girl that night. “You know what it’s like on your birthday – you hardly talk to anyone properly, especially at a party of that size,” she says.
At around midnight, pianist Jools Holland started playing. “Everyone crowded around the piano, then Kate sang something – although I can’t remember for the life of me what she sang.” At 1am, Wood says she and her family took a taxi to their home in Kingston. “I had a couple of glasses of champagne but I wasn’t drunk. I just wanted to remember it,” Wood recalls. However, the party continued until 2am – at which point, after repeated complaints about noise from the neighbours, Moss and 50 of her guests retreated to her Claridge's suite for an after-party, where waiters continued to serve champagne and caviar. Guests danced to a medley of Rolling Stones tracks and, in one of the rooms, some reportedly cavorted naked while others wandered in and out.
The party wrapped up at 8am and guests fell asleep in the suite. It would later make headlines for its debauchery, becoming a byword for louche celebratory excess. Wood, who didn’t attend the after-party, says it was “a good party. I shall always remember ... snippets of it.”