Could it be? Could the world’s sexiest, coolest woman be turning… basic? It has come to feel as if that effervescent, mercurial quality that kept her aloof from the cut and thrust of the celebrity rabble – the endorsement-chasers, the tell-all-interview mongers – has evaporated. Kate Moss is turning into the very thing she had always been at pains to shun.
Moss once called an EasyJet pilot a ‘basic bitch’ after being escorted off the plane for swigging vodka from her carry-on after Sadie Frost’s 50th birthday. Now she is descending to her owner a of basic bitch-ness (to say nothing of her daughter Lila, whose bare nipples at London Fashion Week have been the talk of the internet town).
It began when she embraced Topshop as its designer, launching in 2007. The now-defunct Topshop was many things, but chic and aloof it really struggled to be. The same can be said of its owner, the disgraced businessman Philip Green. Kate is once again ploughing a high-street furrow, with a recent tie-in with Zara.
Her collection for that Spanish middle-class, mid-life stalwart is described breathlessly in terms that sound like a Gen Z girl scoring a Taylor Swift concert ticket. ‘Laser-cut dresses in cream and black, cut on the bias with personal detailing; a smattering of prints, including Moss favourites [like] leopard and a 1930s vintage tea dress; jackets pulled from the back of a wardrobe and remodelled for maximum modern relevance; coats, shoes, and accessories telling stories of the night,’ says the press release. Anything that has to tell you that it is ‘remodelled for maximum modern relevance’ is probably not all that cool.
Having been the face of Rimmel, the stalwart of Superdrug, for 15 years (and hats off to her!), Kate is also fronting a campaign for the slightly higher-up high-street beauty brand Charlotte Tilbury. She is appearing alongside the 33-year-old Jourdan Dunn to promote a mascara called Exagger-Eyes Volume Mascara. As she posed for Tilbury, Kate was once more at it with the costume noir look, sporting an imitation of ‘old Hollywood glamour’ with exaggerated wingtip eyeliner and bouffant hair. In a way, it’s sweet; it’s certainly accessible. It’s just not cool.
In the end, Kate is a hustler and a survivor
Elsewhere in her portfolio of accruing basic-ness: a modelling agency called Kate Moss, which represents… her daughter Lila Moss, full name Lila Grace Moss Hack, the last name courtesy of her father, Jefferson Hack. Keeping things in the family may be a tried-and-true method, but it’s really a little bit basic. Whatever happened to merit?
And at last we come to the most basic of all: Mossy’s lifestyle brand. Now, we all know this embodiment of Cool Britannia from her eff-it philosophy on life; the voddie on EasyJet; the generally hard-living, hard-partying approach that sends a clear message to all that is dewy and wholesome. And yet here we have Cosmoss, a Victoria Beckham-esque cosmetics line, shot through with a heavy dose of Gwyneth Paltrow. There is a picture of a dewy-skinned Kate on the homepage clutching an oil, plus a section on ‘rituals’ which encourages viewers to ‘join the cosmoss’ by soothing the soul, embracing ‘mindful beauty’ and looking for ‘gentle wellbeing’ with ‘balance, restoration and love’.
In the end, Kate is a hustler and a survivor and should be admired for it. It’s just a poignant irony that the very things she used to rebel against – being ordinary, middle-brow and openly commercial – are now what she leads with. There is nothing at all wrong with being basic, and nothing much wrong with Mossy being so. It’s just a sign of the times. If Kate Moss can’t resist the Cosmoss, then who can?
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