Kate Moss turns 50. We and the entire world press take our hats off.
Yesterday, Saturday (January 13th), the gallery “Camera Work” opened a group exhibition with over 30 photographic works with and about Kate. 13 artists with high pop quality can be seen on West Berlin’s Kantstrasse: For example, Bryan Adams, Anton Corbijn, Terry O’Neill, Herb Ritts and Ellen von Unwerth.
One of the many honors for Moss, whose career began when she was just 14. She was on the cover of the London trend magazine “The Face” in the July 1990 issue “The Third Summer of Love”. At 19, she was the “campaign face” of Calvin Klein. The entire fashion cosmos wanted to take photos with the London suburban girl: including Prada, Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano and Marc Jacobs.
The fashion world loved “Kate”, who at 1.70 meters was easily eight centimeters too short for the strange world of nineties and noughties super models.
“Boyish looks” and “heroin chic” were part of her aura. Corresponding riot lovers like Johnny Depp and Pete (“Peter”) Doherty have been part of their bycatch over the years. In a video by the White Stripes she played the dancer on the pole.
But when the tabloid Daily Mirror published paparazzi shots of Kate doing coke in 2005, her meteoric career seemed over.
At the time, she dedicatedly laid a line to her boyfriend Doherty. Within a music video!
Nevertheless, it was a hit for the “People” campaign. H&M, Chanel and Burberry suspended their contracts with Moss for the first time. “The career of any other celebrity would have been over,” wrote the British daily newspaper “Guardian” at the time. But their popularity, their “desirability” and their “NET WORTH” had tripled in this riot and Remmi Demmi era.
The other truth from these “difficult years: Was there anything at all?
An estimate from the British financial press assumed that it had achieved sales of around 11 million pounds in the 2006 “fiscal year”. At the time, experts knew she had a new contract worth around £1.5 million for a campaign for Nikon cameras and another £500,000 deal with fashion label Calvin Klein. In addition, similarly lucrative contracts with the fashion brands Roberto Cavalli, Bulgari, Stella McCartney, Longchamp and later with the telephone provider Virgin Mobile continued.
In the 2010s, the woman in her mid-thirties was more in demand than ever. In 2011, she walked the catwalk wearing quartz for Louis Vuitton.
The more current campaigns don’t look bad either: Bottega Veneta, Saint Laurent, Skims or Anine Bing.
Kate Moss runs her own “beauty line” called “CosMoss” (Ha Ha!!), as well as a modeling agency founded in 2016. Her daughter Lila Moss, who emerged from her love affair with “Dazed and Confused” master Jefferson Hack, also runs there.
Most recently, she testified in the trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard and defended her ex-boyfriend – she never knew him as a violent criminal.
Moss can soon be seen in the cinema to mark his special birthday; played by Ellie Bamber in the biopic “Kate & Freud”.
It’s about a fantasy liaison between her and the UK artist Lucian Freud. Spoiler: We see a kind of noble ass antlers, consisting of two tattooed pigeons over Moss’s tailbone, as well as a sinfully expensive nude painting.
Happy Birthday; Kate!