Overrated Heroine: Kate Moss

From coolest woman in the world to raddled druggie in just a few days.

Or: in no days at all. For here is Jess Cartner-Morley in The Guardian on Thursday September 15, 2005, the very day in which the Daily Mirror published the fateful photos, explaining Why Kate Moss is the coolest woman on earth:

The power politics of fashion's inner sanctum are opaque to all outside it, and so riven with Chinese whispers that most of those on the inside are only pretending to know what's going on. ... Elsewhere, the dynamics of style are fairly self-evident: a pretty girl - Sienna Miller, for instance - wears nice clothes, gets film-star boyfriend, so we all copy her for a bit. After a while we get bored of her look and start slagging her off instead. Often, this happens at about the same point the film star boyfriend gets bored and starts slagging around, which is a bit brutal, but there you go.

But fashion's top tier has a pecking order all its own. At this level, such mundane considerations as pretty dresses and It handbags will get you precisely nowhere. ... Anna Wintour sits with her arms and legs crossed, with no handbag, just a tiny mobile phone in a tiny hand. Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue, has fine, raven hair with no extensions or highlights, is sinewy-thin but without fake breasts, and has a lopsided-sexy smile that is likened to either Mick Jagger or Iggy Pop, depending on whether she turned you down for a job. She is unlikely to grace the cover of Heat. Within the industry, however, the influence of her look is so great that Tom Ford considered her his muse while designing for Gucci.

Roitfeld - and this is the news that seems to have prompted the article - is letting Kate guest edit the December issue of French Vogue.

"There is something magical about Kate," said Roitfeld. Of course, this statement only confirms what Heat readers have known for years, but therein lies the impact: the greatest mass fashion icon is being given the ultimate seal of critical approval.
...
Moss's influence over fashion grows by the minute. She stalks the catwalks and corridors of fashion power looking mischievous and haughty at the same time, like Madame de Pompadour, only slightly less chaste. By the simple technique of almost never uttering a word to the press, she has perfected a public persona that makes Anna Wintour - probably her only remaining rival for the title of fashion's most influential woman - look cuddly and approachable. Moss, who as a model understands full well that even icons have to keep up, currently has two public looks. One is accessorised with a waistcoat, Pete Doherty, a bottle of beer and sunglasses which hint at late, late nights; the other is elegant and decadent, in an F Scott Fitzgerald kind of way, all expensive evening gowns and gin and tonics. The theme for Moss's 30th birthday party at Claridges, after all, was "the beautiful and the damned".
...

Some of the oddities of Britain's celebrity obsession can be glimpsed in that article. The "dynamics of style" are treated as something that just happens. We just "start slagging her off", for no particular reason, when we "get bored of her look", rather than just ... getting bored, and moving on to someone else. And that has supposedly happened with Sienna Miller? "At about the same point the film star boyfriend gets bored"? I wonder if it has, in any lasting way. She still seems popular enough to me.

Heat is mentioned, without anything about its role in style / slagging dynamics; and although Carine Roitfeld is "unlikely to grace the cover", Heat readers were supposedly years ahead of her in knowing "there is something magical about Kate."

Now a dynamic has many slagging Kate off instead, led by the press; but will the public follow?

In more innocent times, just two days before, Marina Hyde's chosen criticism in her gently mocking So you couldn't quite get your head around A Brief History of Time? was merely distress at Kate's voice:

Profoundly troubling as it is to learn that Kate Moss is considering quitting Britain, one has to agree she has no choice if she is to preserve her myth.

For years, the supermodel has turned down all requests for interviews and refused to comment on any story. So many photographs coupled with so few words have contrived to surround her with an air of beautiful, fascinating mystery. ...

But Who the F*** is Pete Doherty?, the recent BBC3 documentary about her on-off Babyshambles singer boyfriend, changed all that irrevocably. Initially all seemed well. There was footage of Kate laughing silently, lounging silently, and dancing silently. Then there was footage of her arriving at Glastonbury (silently) while music, always incidental music, swirled round her heavenly form.

At which point there was a sound akin to the needle being abruptly scraped off a record. "Oh my God!" she screeched at some acquaintance in gratingly strident tones. "You've no idea what a facking nightmare we've had getting here ..."

Mossy. It's over. Bon voyage.