The model reveals how an uncomfortable photoshoot early in her career helped sharpen her instincts.
Image source, BBC / Amanda BensonKate Moss has revealed how a photoshoot as a teenager opened her eyes to the dangers of the fashion industry.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs programme how she found herself with a man who wanted to photograph her for a bra catalogue.
Moss said she was aged just 15 at the time and he told her to take her bra off.
She said the experience had “sharpened her instinct” and that as a result she could “tell a wrong ‘un a mile away”.
“I was only 15 probably and he said: ‘Take your top off’,” she said.
“I took my top off, and I was really shy then about my body, and he said “take your bra off” and I could feel there was something wrong so I got my stuff and I ran away.”
- Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 at 11:15 BST on Sunday and on BBC Sounds
Spotted by a talent scout at the age of 14, Moss was signed by Storm modelling agency in 1988.
The 48-year-old told presenter Lauren Laverne how she would go to castings in London on her own, armed with just an A to Z street guide.
Image source, Reuters
Moss went on to become one of fashion’s most famous faces, and remains in demand with designers and magazine editors around the world.
In 1992, she shot her first major advertising campaign for Calvin Klein with actor Mark Wahlberg, known as Marky Mark at the time.
But Moss said the underwear shoot did not bring back good memories.
Topless for the photographs, the model said she felt objectified and “vulnerable and scared”.
She said she suffered from severe anxiety before the shoot and was prescribed Valium to help her get through the experience.
Now an agent herself, her daughter Lila Moss is on her books, and the icon said she has been able to give her some advice about the fashion industry.
“I’ve said to her you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” she said.
“If you don’t want to do this shoot, if you don’t feel comfortable, if you don’t want to model, don’t do it.”
She explained that she takes care of her models and ensures an agent is always with them at a shoot so there is someone there to say “I don’t think that’s appropriate”.
Image source, Reuters
Moss also opened up about standing by friend John Galliano, the designer who was found guilty of racist abuse in 2011, and her former partner actor Johnny Depp during his recent libel trial in the US.
She explained: “I believe in the truth and I believe in fairness and justice.
“I know that John Galliano is not a bad person – he had an alcohol problem and people turn. People aren’t themselves when they drink and they say things that they would never say when they were sober”.
She continued: “I know the truth about Johnny. I know he never kicked me down the stairs. I had to say that truth.”
Moss for a while was perhaps most well known for controversial fashion photos taken by Corinne Day for British Vogue in 1993.
Day’s images of Moss posing suggestively were criticised and prompted a media debate about so-called “heroin chic”.
Moss said: “I think I was a scapegoat for a lot of peoples’ problems. I was never anorexic, I never have been.
“I had never taken heroin. I was thin because I didn’t get fed at shoots or in shows and I’d always been thin.”
Kate also talked about not believing she was photogenic when she was younger, sitting for a portrait by artist Lucian Freud and the quiet life she leads in the Cotswolds.