Dear Gossips,

Back in October, Apple TV+ announced that they’re working on a new docuseries called The Supermodels featuring four members of the Big Five – Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington. Like I said at the time, this is exactly where I live. I am obsessed with the supermodels from the 90s and while I generally try not to be that person who’s always like, oh the sh-t you kids have today is nothing like the sh-t we had back in the day… where supermodels are concerned, to me, the 90s club is untouchable.

In my post about The Supermodels a few weeks ago, I mentioned that the Big Five eventually became the Big Six when Kate Moss exploded onto the scene. And you can’t overstate her arrival. Everybody was talking about Kate Moss. For years they talked about Kate Moss. Kate Moss was the London look, she not only epitomised a very specific time in that decade, she also shaped the look of the following decades.

Kate Moss covers the January 2021 issue of British Vogue, two of them. I prefer the second version over the first one of her in green. This is more my Kate Moss jam:

As Edward Enninful notes in his editor’s letter, it’s been almost 28 years since Kate first showed up on the cover of British Vogue and it was a gamechanger. Here it is, a timeless image:

Kate Moss's first Vogue cover, March 1993

That FACE.

Designers were beguiled by her to the point of obsession. They still are. Several of them show up in a video British Vogue posted to go along with the new issue, with Kate answering 28 questions from her family and friends, many of them prominent members of the fashion community:

And what makes it fascinating is that for a long time, we never really heard from Kate. She’s never been a public over-sharer, or even a sharer. Over the last few years, she’s been open to more interviews and online content but if Instagram had been around when Kate was on the come-up Kate would never go on Instagram Live to talk about…whatever, her feelings.

You know why? She was too busy partying!

Partying is basically every other answer in the video above, LOL. Kate’s partying, as we know, is legendary. And partying in the 90s was nothing like partying today when someone could easily be recording. The party stories Kate could tell…

But while so many of her responses inevitably come back to partying, Kate never parties and tells, even though we all wish she would. I want to know EVERYTHING. However, as British Vogue notes:

“Twenty-seven years on, she remains one of the most recognisable faces of our times, an enigmatic sphinx who has, famously, never complained, never explained. And if the sphinx has a riddle, she has not made the mistake of letting us know what it is.”

Never complain, never explain is also the motto of the Queen – and she actually comes up in Kate’s video when she talks about how she never imagined she’d be able to meet the Queen. So then I had to revisit the time Kate met the Queen. It was back in 2004:

Kate Moss talks to the Queen at a reception held at Buckingham Palace, where celebrities, writers, sports stars, academics and business high-flyers were among the many women achievers being saluted by the Royal Family, March 2004

It was an event celebrating female achievers. Note the other women who were there: JK Rowling, Heather Mills (!!!), and Charlotte Church. But also, at some point, Kate was hanging out with Sam Taylor-Johnson, who was then known as Sam Taylor-Wood:

Photographer Sam Taylor Wood and model Kate Moss arrive at a reception held at Buckingham Palace, where celebrities, writers, sports stars, academics and business high-flyers were among the many women achievers being saluted by the Royal Family, March 2004

This moment in gossip nostalgia has been brought to you by, well, Kate herself.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

Sam Taylor-Johnson Gossip

About