Kate Moss has thrown some of the most legendary parties in British history, from her 'Beautiful And The Damned' themed 30th in a suite at Claridges to her '80s themed 40th which started in Mayfair and lasted 48 Hours later ended up at their ten-bedroom house in the Cotswolds.
However, to celebrate her 50th birthday, the Croydon supermodel ditched hedonism for the heat and jetted off with her love interest, Mustique. Now Kate is sober and the proud owner of wellness brand Cosmoss. The only thing Kate will likely be falling out of is her bikini top as she celebrates her milestone birthday with her family and friends today.
I've interviewed Kate three times and each time I found her to be extremely private – cameras were banned at her last birthday party and are expected to be vetoed at this event too.
But delicious details escape her. To celebrate her half-century, here Laura Craik shares 50 things less known about her extraordinary life…
Kate Moss attends the Saint Laurent Womenswear Spring/Summer 2023 show during Paris Fashion Week on September 27, 2022
Kate Moss at the Hue Restaurant in New York, 2003
Kate Moss and Rik Mayall in Blackadder
1 An 18-carat gold statue of her, right, by Marc Quinn, was exhibited at the British Museum.
2 Of her seven tattoos, some are more visible – and valuable – than others. In 2012, she revealed in an interview with Vanity Fair that the two small swallows at the base of her spine were engraved by the late painter Lucian Freud, who famously painted her nude in 2002. She joked that if she ever fell on hard times, she could always get a skin graft and sell it and say, “I mean, it's a Freud original.” I wonder how much a collector would pay for it? A few million?'
3 …Or even £3.9 million, which is what Freud's painting of Kate lying pregnant with her daughter Lila Grace fetched when it went under the hammer at Christie's in 2005. The portrait, which was sold to an anonymous buyer, took nine months to complete, with the model sitting dutifully in Freud's house from 7 a.m. to 2 a.m. seven nights a week. Freud doesn't paint just anyone: he refused to paint Princess Diana on the grounds that he couldn't get past her “gloss.”
Marc Quinn's solid gold statue of Kate Moss 'Siren' is on display in the British Museum's Statuefilia exhibition at the Nereid Gallery in London on October 2, 2008
4 An avid art collector, she is said to own works by Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Marc Quinn, Gary Hume, the Chapman brothers and Banksy.
5 In 2013, Vogue reported that her favorite cocktail was the Twinkle – champagne, elderflower cordial, a splash of vodka and a slice of lemon. These days she is abstinent, having quit alcohol in 2017.
6 At the height of her partying days, her friends affectionately nicknamed her The Tank because of her amazing drinking ability and stamina.
7 Although Naomi Campbell preferred to call it “The Wagon” – not, as some assumed, because it kept falling down. According to Campbell, the nickname was first coined by Bono's wife Ali Hewson, who called Kate “little car” after meeting her in Ireland.
8 Kate called her ex-husband Jamie Hince “The Vicar” because he tried to stop her from cigarettes and alcohol.
Kate Moss attends the Pandora Fashion Awards 2023 at the Royal Albert Hall on December 4, 2023 in London
9 Hince, guitarist for The Kills, proposed to Kate daily after they returned from vacation in Thailand in 2011. She finally accepted while watching C4's reality TV series My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. “I just saw Jamie, so cute, and I thought, these girls spend their whole lives waiting for this day – let's do it!” she told American Vogue.
10 She paid for her own diamond engagement ring, a design inspired by Zelda Fitzgerald, the party-girl wife of Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald.
11 She loves flying and never travels without a £2,440 Hermes yak wool cashmere blanket and a passport case full of family photos. “I always go to sleep on planes,” she said in a 2015 interview.
Kate Moss attends the 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 2, 2022
12 Well, not always. In June of that year, she caused a stir on an EasyJet flight from Turkey to London because she was upset that the cabin crew had run out of sandwiches. When she returned from a grueling detox at The LifeCo in Bodrum, she was believed to be “hungry” – hungry and angry – because she was denied her first opportunity to eat.
13 The term “basic slut” was popularized by Kate: she is said to have called one of the cabin crew that on the same flight.
14 In 1999, she had two cameos in Blackadder, appearing as Maid Marian and the fictional Queen of England.
15 In a 2006 stage version of Little Britain in aid of Comic Relief, Kate appeared as Matt Lucas' obnoxious TV character Vicky Pollard's sister Katie.
16 She makes plum jam from fruit grown on her property in the Cotswolds – and even opened her own jam stall in Glastonbury in 2015.
17 The most expensive product for sale on her wellness website Cosmoss is Sacred Mist, described as “a fragrance for the soul, the self, the space.” A 100ml bottle costs £125.
18 She also sells tea bags for £20, except that these are not just tea bags, but appear to have been mixed exclusively by an alchemist and are meant to be enjoyed as part of a special Dawn ritual.
Kate Moss poses on the red carpet upon arrival for the Fashion Awards 2023 at the Royal Albert Hall in London on December 4, 2023
19 Most people remember Kate for her range with Topshop, which launched in 2007. Fewer remember her collaboration with the Spanish chain Mango; a joint one with fellow supermodel Cara Delevingne in 2015.
20 WHEN the Topshop collection launched, there was industry talk about how “lazy” it was that Moss's design philosophy was simply to adapt favorite pieces from her own wardrobe. This is now a standard approach among celebrities – but Kate did it first.
21 The best-selling piece from her hugely successful 14-season collection for Topshop was a one-shoulder lemon tea dress (left).
22 In 2005, she surprised everyone by not only appearing in a TV commercial for Virgin Mobile, but also speaking, something she had always refused to do. The deal reportedly earned her £1.2 million.
23 One of the few other times she has spoken publicly was in 2022, when she testified in the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard libel trial and beamed herself into the Virginia court via video from her home in Gloucestershire. She dispelled a rumor that Depp pushed her down a flight of stairs in the 1990s when he was her boyfriend.
The term “basic slut” was popularized by Kate: she is said to have called one of the cabin crew that on a flight
24 While some of her beauty secrets are expensive, her favorite hairbrush is a Mason Pearson nylon N4 pocket brush for £36 – in baby pink or baby blue so she can find it in her bag.
25 She lived next door to George Michael in north London: the two were so close that Moss sometimes climbed over the walls from garden to garden with a ladder.
26 Not only is she the face of Diet Coke, she is also the brand's creative director.
27 She does gardening in £170 Chelsea boots.
28 …with a Spear & Jackson 9 liter watering can from the Yorkshire brand's Kew Gardens collection (£40.99).
Kate bag by Saint Laurent, 2010
29 She has her pick of the world's best fragrances, but one of her favorites is the relatively affordable Acqua di Rose (£33) from the venerable Florentine pharmacy Santa Maria Novella (founded in 1221), which she likes to apply to her face and body after a shower.
30 She's fiercely loyal to her glam team and has had her blonde hair maintained by the same colorist, Nicola Clarke, for decades.
31 Her favorite hairdressers are her friends Sam McKnight and James Brown.
32 Like many of us, her favorite comfort food is mashed potatoes – only hers is with sour cream and Princesse d'Isenbourg caviar.
33 One of her favorite books is the feminist bestseller Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
34 She achieves her famous smoky leg look with Wolford's Individual 10 nylon tights, worth £35.
Kate Moss presents a creation by French designer Yves Saint Laurent on March 9, 1994 in Paris during the Fall-Winter 1994/1995 collection
35 KATE is good friends with artist Jake Chapman, who, along with his brother Dinos, was nicknamed “The Brothers Grim” for their controversial work in the 1990s.
36 She is also best friends with Chapman's wife, model and nutritionist Rosemary Ferguson.
37 Ferguson's daughters Elfie and Bliss are signed to Kate Moss' modeling agency of the same name – as is Kate's 21-year-old daughter Lila.
38 Kate may have appeared on the cover of countless magazines, but in 2010 she also appeared on the cover of Bryan Ferry's album Olympia.
39 She suggested in an interview that a quote attributed to her, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” was taken out of context, adding, “I think I was a scapegoat for a lot of people's problems.” “I was never anorexic, I never was.”
40 She is known to be on the best-dressed list, but in 2008 she appeared on the animal rights group Peta's worst-dressed list for wearing fur.
41 In 2002, she dueted with her friend Bobby Gillespie of the rock band Primal Scream on Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra's 1967 song “Some Velvet Morning.” British charts.
42 Her relationship with troubled musician Pete Doherty is well documented; their contributions to his albums were less well documented. Of the 12 songs on his band Babyshambles' second album, Shotter's Nation, four songs feature Kate's vocals and credit her as a co-writer.
Model Kate Moss wears a flap hat with a suede jacket, April 7, 1994, during the exhibition of Anne Klein's Fall 1994 collection
43 In a recent TV documentary with Louis Theroux, Doherty revealed that one of his favorite freaks about Kate when they were together between 2005 and 2007 was how she ordered Coca-Cola through her assistant. “I learned that Donald Trump was doing the same thing and that put me off a little,” he added.
44 She has performed at a number of events, including a Miu Miu party in 2017.
45 As befits one of the most famous supermodels of all time, a number of products have been named after her (including Saint Laurent's Kate bag, far left), most recently a pink lipstick, Nude Kate (above), by her Long-time friend was created by girlfriend Charlotte Tilbury. “I take it with me everywhere,” she says.
46 She is unusually small for a catwalk model, at around 1.60 meters tall.
47 She is also unusually generous. Her boyfriend, the hairdresser James Brown, once told me that she often donated to charity but preferred to keep her generosity private.
48 She is the most prolific Vogue cover girl in the world, appearing on the cover of British Vogue 44 times, as well as 16 Paris covers and five American ones.
49 As of 2022, she had a net worth of $70 million.
50 In 2000, she briefly retired from modeling and reportedly called her agency, Storm, to tell her she was quitting. “I never wanted to say 'I'm a model' again,” she told Time Out.