Grab your Calvins and prepare to celebrate, kids — Thursday, everyone’s favorite waif turns the big 4-0. With her unique look, the British beauty has altered the face of fashion and left an indelible mark on popular culture. Although it’s impossible to rank the iconic moments that define Moss’ exceptional 26-year career, here are 10 of the best.
The Corinne Day photo shoot and cover of “The Face”
The Calvin Klein campaigns
“She has this childlike, womanlike thing. It’s a kind of sexiness that I think is very exciting,” Calvin Klein told People magazine in 1992. That sexiness sparked a lot of controversy when, in the spring of 1993, bare-bones images of the stick-thin siren hit magazines and billboards and incited the rise of the anti-supermodel — featherweight beauties who looked liked emaciated versions of Amazons, such as Cindy Crawford and Linda Evangelista. Ads showing a topless Moss straddling a shirtless Mark Wahlberg (né Marky Mark) only fueled the fuss. “It’s just because I look 12,’’ Moss told People, and thus began the era of “heroin chic.”
Kate & Johnny
The ’70s had Sid and Nancy, but in the ’90s it was all about Johnny (Depp) and Kate. From 1994 until 1998, they were among the best-known (and outright infamous) couples in Hollywood. Rumor has it the two once filled the tub of a London hotel with champagne for a dip. But glamorous gossip aside, the pairing yielded very real photo moments — including a famed 1994 photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz — that will live forever in our style-obsessed hearts (and even longer on Tumblr).
A career comeback
In 2005, Moss faced a p.r. nightmare when she was caught on camera allegedly using cocaine. One particularly damning photo ran on the cover of the Daily Mirror, and Moss was dropped by high-profile brands like Burberry, Chanel and H&M almost immediately. Sad times. Fortunately, Moss’s longtime agent Sarah Doukas (the one who discovered her at JFK) stepped in and did some major damage control. “I basically just spent a lot of time on the phone trying to reassure her big clients that you can’t believe everything you read,” Doukas told Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. “And, unfortunately, all press actually is good press in this world we live in. So keep calm, don’t have a knee-jerk reaction.” The sweet talk worked, apparently, since she not only got those clients back, but doubled her earnings. As of last year, Moss is the fourth highest paid model in the world. Bam!
McQueen makes Kate a hologram
At the end of his fall/winter 2006 Paris show, amid Moss’ drug scandal, Alexander McQueen staged a technical feat that saw the model projected as a hologram inside a glass pyramid. As Sarah Mower wrote for Style.com, “Her blonde hair and pale arms trailing in a dream-like apparition of fragility and beauty that danced for a few seconds, then shrank and dematerialized into the ether.” McQueen then took his bow wearing a T-shirt decorated with the slogan “We Love You, Kate!” Visually exquisite and emotionally compelling, the show’s moment is arguably the best seen from both Moss and the late great designer himself.
Moss as high-art muse
British contemporary artist Marc Quinn turned Moss into an icon quite literally in 2006 when he revealed “Sphinx,” a bronze sculpture of Moss contorted into a complicated yoga position.
According to Quinn, the representation is meant to convey “a mirror of ourselves, a knotted Venus of our age,” and since then the artist has made numerous studies of Moss, which are housed in museums and galleries across the globe.
The DIY Dior dress
It would just be wrong to have a Kate Moss list without mention of her party-hardy ways. The model’s nighttime antics are legendary, but her finest came in 2007 at the V&A Golden Age of Couture gala. Moss arrived at the London event in a 1940s Christian Dior dress . . . and stumbled out of the fête in one of her own design. The floor-length vintage gown, which had torn at some point during the night, got expertly tied into a bow and made into a mini dress. It looked even better than it did before, and embodied perfectly Moss’ uncanny mix of ingenuity, irreverence and style.
Holy smokes!
Speaking of irreverence, how about the time Moss smoked a cig on the runway? Yep, that happened. After a three-year break from modeling, the model made a surprise appearance for her friend Marc Jacobs and walked in his Louis Vuitton fall/winter 2011 Paris show. Though the casting included all-stars like Naomi Campbell, Amber Valletta and Carolyn Murphy, it was Kate who stole the show — her bad habit paired with hot pants and bondage-style boots .
A fairy tale wedding
Bridezillas the world over turned green with envy when Moss wed rocker Jamie Hince of the Kills and killed every aspect of the 2011 nuptials. Exhibit A: the gown crafted by friend and ex-Christian Dior creative director John Galliano. The chiffon number was simple, sophisticated, and a perfect emblem for the ceremony at large, which was held at the Moss homestead in the Cotswolds, England. “I wanted it to be kind of dreamy and 1920s, when everything is soft-focus,” Moss told Vogue. The glossy published Mario Testino’s photos of the big day, and a particular bucolic shot the model and her flower-crowned family of woodland nymph-looking kids will go down as perhaps the loveliest wedding photos of all time.
The London Olympics closing ceremony catwalk extravaganza
In 2012, with the whole world watching, amid royalty, gold medalists and the Spice Girls, Kate Moss walked across the Olympic Stadium and upstaged everyone. The model was joined by Naomi Campbell, Jourdan Dunn, David Gandy and other fashion world peers as each stomped from the corners of a Union Jack stage to the rhythm of David Bowie’s “Fashion.”
Kate wore a sparkling gold dress by Alexander McQueen (duh) — and though critics were quick to attack the stunt on Twitter (“I suspect Kate Moss might fail her drugs test later. #closingceremony,” Piers Morgan jeered) — we were giddy with delight and ready to nose dive into the TV screen.
