Κate Moss

She's the world's most unlikely supermodel, one who changed fashion forever. As she turns 50, we look at how the style icon has shed her infamous partying for a more grounded existence

- By Alexandra English

In 1993, 19-year-old Kate Moss told an interviewer, “I don’t want to carry on modelling as long as Lauren Hutton.” Hutton was 50 – the same age that Moss turns on January 16. Moss is still modelling (and, for the record, so is Hutton), walking Bottega Veneta’s spring/summer 2023 runway in Milan and fronting Kim Kardashian’s latest Skims underwear campaign. “Kate is the fashion icon,” said Kardashian. “She has a timeless influence that continues to define whole generations of culture and style.”

There’s no denying Moss has incredible staying power. For 35 years, the famously private model’s motto, “Never complain, never explain,” has seen her thrive through intense criticism about her body, doomed relationships with Hollywood stars and musicians, and a drug scandal. She has long been one of the world’s highest-paid and most in-demand models.

Moss was 14 when the founder of the model agency Storm Management, Sarah Doukas, spotted her at JFK airport in New York. The teenager with “God-given bone structure” and newly divorced parents was flying home from a holiday in The Bahamas. Moss and her mother, Linda, were surprised. Moss was barely 170cm tall – short for a model – with a crooked smile, snaggle-tooth and freckled face. “I wasn’t the prettiest girl in class,” Moss said later. “No breasts, short legs, gangly teeth. I didn’t think I was model material, that’s for sure.”

Fashion was a world away from where she lived in Croydon, south London, with Linda, a part-time barmaid, and Moss’ father, Peter, who worked for the Pan Am airline, and little brother, Nick.