Magazine Madness: Moss the Boss, from Cover Girl to Fashion Editor at UK VOGUE

VOGUE UK April 2017

Once the most favourite cover girl of Vogue British, now the famously private contributing fashion editor, in April 2017, Kate Moss invites writer Fiona Golfar, photographer duo Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, into her universe, and reveals the reason the time is ripe for her new business venture.

After 28 years of being represented by Storm Models, 43-year-old Moss split from the contract last April, and launches the Kate Moss Agency, of which is searching for characters to shine on stage. Though the decision announces that the chances of fashion campaigns of Kate Moss in decrease, still, it as well predicts that the influence of this fashion icon only penetrates deeper and longer in the industry ever since.

Indeed Kate Moss is not only able to mix and match the high street into high-end on her daily outfits, also on the communication and collaboration at fashion world, she totally nails it. Having her holiday with her daughter, Lila, and together with supermodel Naomi Campbell in Brazil, and this spring she signed her goddaughter Louis Baines and her model friend Rosemary Ferguson’s child, Elfie Reigate, under her own model agency; later this year, she points her boyfriend Nikolai von Bismarck, the photographer, to take fashion campaign for Vogue April 2017 issue. Even Father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud’s grandson, who a profound artist, Lucian Freud, also painted Kate’s portrait when she was in pregnancy. Perhaps it is extraordinary cool to be an insider of Moss’s gang, still, while being as an interviewer, Miss Fiona Golfar is too overexcited to be a calm observer. Due to that the cover title is ‘The Business of Being Kate Moss’, perhaps the readers will be more interested in the details of Moss’s preparations behind the scenes of creating a series of fashion photography rather only glancing those household names linked together with Kate for the whole several pages.

Truly, we do not personally care if Kate Moss’s 10-year-assistant making her a cup of milky coffee with honey, or Lila’s nanny is a doppelgänger of Vivienne Westwood. We know Kate, we wish that Kate expresses photography inspirations from the movies such as Out of the Blues, is from her own lips, not only from some boyfriends; we love Kate, we surely want to know more her “pretty lonely first modeling years”, but not from the memoir of her booker; we want more, her tone and her opinions are mysterious to us, since we realize that Kate has been almost mute in front of camera, presenting for other brands almost over three decades. While it’s almost a mission impossible to be a member of this ‘cool gang’, it is interview’s great responsibilities, to dare requesting more from this beautiful and independent female’s inner voices, in order to turn our reading pleasure great, even the business woman herself claims that “I don't’ give interviews because I’m so shit at keeping my mouth shut when I do” (170). A professional interviewer’s point is not on ‘having a irrefutable cigarette with Kate in order to hang out longer’ (238), but of the abilities to discover more of her own words from her conversation, even they may lead to certain level of parental explicit contents.

While a lady is introduced her significant silhouette on a remarkable cover, the interviewers’ gazes and profiling are always passive, yet the interviewee’s unpolished speeches are first hand. Considering the reader’s reception theory, the mass spread of information and the fading business of publication, those who call themselves as journalists, shall be highly aware of that contributing a genuine interview is more appreciated than only being an ‘insider of cool gang’. 

For the magazine madness photography, as usual I adapt one Chanel camellias to hide the price tag, let the other two flowers be the mere decorations. Kate Moss was once Chanel makeup spokeswoman, so Rouge Allure ultrarose #257 lipstick and Le Volume Noir Khôl #90 mascara escort side-by-side, and the black-and-white dices, on number 5, is carved with Chanel double C logo, all symbolize the chance and risk on the journey of business universe.