The Mail on Sunday

KATE, BEHIND THE ENIGMA – BY WOMAN WHO HELPED MAKE HER A SUPERSTAR

As mysterious as she is mesmerisin­g, few know the real Kate Moss. Now, as she stars on the cover of Vogue 28 YEARS after making her debut, its former editor offers a unique insight into what gives the model she f irst helped make famous at 19 her supernov

- By ALEXANDRA SHULMAN

MY FAVOURITE memory of Kate Moss is from British Vogue’s 100th birthday afterparty. True to form, she had been the last to arrive at the gala dinner, giggling arm- in- arm with her great friends make-up artist Charlotte Tilbury and hair-stylist Sam McKnight, who had been at her home doing her up.

Giorgio Armani, Damien Lewis, Joan Collins, Kim Kardashian and 200 other guests were all seated, but not Kate.

She made up for it at the later bash at Tramp nightclub, where in a sliver of black she climbed up on the decks, as discs were spun by DJ Fat Tony, and powered the dancefloor – transformi­ng what was a fun evening into something unforgetta­bly special.

The party was naturally pretty glamorous but it was Kate, with her supernova power, who confirmed that you were at the only place to be. She’s like that.

The next morning I discovered my then 21-year-old son had a tangle of her straggly blonde hair extensions in his jacket pocket.

And now, four years later, Kate is on her 40th cover of Vogue. In fact, she’s on two.

In one, her hair still long and tawny, she wears a green Dior goddess dress plunged to her navel,

Head back, eyes tilted down… she knows the mechanics of glamour

bra-less, head slightly back, eyes tilted down in insolent challenge and her lips just parted in a pose she has perfected and repeated over her remarkable 32-year career. In the other there is another trademark Kate Look. Dressed in a black Versace crop top with a leather belt caressing her bare hip, and a black beret, she is less come-hither and more enigmatic.

But she could have been wearing the proverbial bin bag and the cover line of Better Than Ever would apply.

It has been an extraordin­ary trip for the Croydon schoolgirl scouted by Storm Models back in 1988 when she was just 14. And one which undeniably has made her one of most famous – and, at the same time, enigmatic – women in the world.

It was March 1993 when I first put her, aged 19, on the cover of British Vogue. By that time she was known to fashion insiders and had already been on the cover of The Face magazine, but this, her first Vogue cover, was an initiation into the big time.

There are moments when fashion pivots on its axis – and this was one of them.

American designer Marc Jacobs had recently produced his famous Grunge collection, sending models Linda Evangelist­a, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell and, yes, the smaller, slightly bandy- legged, flat- chested Kate Moss out on a New York catwalk in Converse sneakers and woolly beanies, styling them like a gang of West London schoolgirl­s.

It was the fashion show that epitomised a move away from the powerdress­ing of the 1980s and into the 1990s of New Labour, Brit Pop and renegade Young British Artists such as Damien Hirst.

And I thought there was no one better to encapsulat­e that cooler, edgier feeling in the air than the little-known Kate – wide-eyed and seemingly bare-faced.

It’s no accident that since then ,Kate Moss has always been the right face, in the right place, at the right time. She is a woman who has always had an innate understand­ing of the mechanics of glamour and how to use fame. A woman who, in many ways, has mirrored the cultural shifts of changing eras.

The child- woman of the early 1990s became, towards the end of the decade, the ladette, designerlo­ving party girl with dramatic and flawed loves such as Johnny Depp and Pete Doherty.

When the London high street was riding high, she was Philip Green’s trophy designer at Topshop, producing a range that mimicked her own wardrobe.

Five years ago, as the mother of Lila Grace (now 18), she decided it was time to take her career in a new direction, starting up her own model agency to launch Lila and other young models.

And, rather than being jealous of her daughter’s youthful beauty, she embraces it – last week they were photograph­ed together to promote a range of their own-brand white hoodies.

Spending her weeks between London and the Cotswolds, she is now teetotal in this cleaner-living age and partner of the charming and extraordin­arily eligible photograph­er Count Nikolai von Bismarck, who – Kate being on-trend as ever – is 13 years younger than her.

Recently she has begun to give interviews and do videos, but for the first 20 years of her career only those who were family, friends, lovers or colleagues heard her speak. Never complain, never explain was the motto that served her well.

Many models are frustrated by being a silent cipher, but Kate has never had any desire to use her voice. Instead, as cannily knowing as the Sphinx of Giza, she instinctiv­ely understood that her image could speak so much louder than mere words and that, as her fame grew, her silence would only gain more potency.

You won’t hear her pontificat­ing about climate change.

Iconic is one of our most overused descriptio­ns, but in Kate’s case it is true. An icon represents something more than the thing itself. And that is what Kate has become.

But, in private, she hardly draws breath. Her gravelly South London voice rattles away in a stream of anecdotes and mimicry.

Flung on a sofa in a pile of velvet cushions in her Highgate home,

Her gravelly South London voice rattles away in a stream of mimickry

cackles of laughter ricochet off the walls as she waves her hands around to illustrate her point, a simple but priceless diamond bracelet worn casually on her wrist.

Or you might, as I did a few summers ago, find her behind her classic sunglasses on the Greek island of Hydra, bare-legged and dressed in her trademark black, sitting at a cafe table and nattering on her mobile, planning the day with her friend, the late now David Tang, whose large boat moored opposite hers was hosting Sarah, the Duchess of York, while Philip Green’s super-yacht Lionheart was en route for a rendezvous.

Coincident­ally, given last week’s news of the collapse of Arcadia, it was when interviewi­ng her in 2007 at a Vogue shoot to celebrate her debut collection for Topshop that I first encountere­d Kate up close.

Yes, she had come to parties and dinners I had hosted – often, I knew, on sufferance, urged that it would be politic to make nice with the editor of Vogue – but she would generally avoid anything or anyone with a whiff of corporate obligation about it.

I remember walking into the hair and make-up room, where she was noisily regaling the assembled company with some juicy piece of gossip, and the icy silence that fell as she fixed me with a Medusa stare. As an outsider, I was treated to the full force of her excluding weaponry – sideways looks, whispered exchanges. No one looks down their nose more effectivel­y than she, and I felt at once ancient and like a child marooned outside the gang. And then, for no apparent reason, it was all change and she was warm, funny, inclusive and open.

As David Tang brilliantl­y put it at the time: ‘She’s like the neutrons and protons sleeping in the centre of the atom, with all these electrons spinning around her. She’s in the middle and everybody’s going f***ing mad on the periphery pandering to her.’

Like royalty, everyone recognises her and nobody knows much about her. She loves the company of friends who comply with the strict code of omerta she demands. She is extremely generous and kind (when I left Vogue, she sent me the most exquisite porcelain jar filled with lilies for my garden). And she has a unique sense of style.

Watching her go through a rail of clothes, holding them up against her body, talking about a photograph something reminds her of, slipping into an item and turning it from a dull rag into something utterly desirable as she cinches it around her waist, adjusts the neckline and twirls in the mirror, is why I asked her to join Vogue as a fashion editor in 2013.

She loved the idea of being in charge of the whole shoot for a change, picking photograph­ers and models, choosing the clothes.

Did she do the donkey work? Of course not. Did she miss deadlines? Naturally. But there was not a photograph­er or model who wasn’t excited by the idea of working with her and inspired by her enthusiasm.

Of course, in the end she really wanted to be the model herself. It’s been her life; it’s what she knows.

The camera lens is the lover she never tires of. And it’s why she’s still there on Vogue covers and advertisin­g campaigns at 46, and no doubt will still be in another ten years. Nobody does it better.

The room fell into icy silence and she fixed me with a Medusa stare

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