麻豆约拍

Kate Moss came to fame as a model in the early 1990s and her waif-like figure challenged the statuesque and curvaceous supermodels whose look dominated the catwalk back then. At 18 she became the face of Calvin Klein, starring in a range of adverts for the designer’s perfume. She has been on the cover of hundreds of magazines, has had her own clothing range, is a contributing fashion editor for British Vogue and in 2016 she set up her own talent agency. Here’s what we learned from her Desert Island Discs…

1. She’s still camera-shy even after three decades in the spotlight

“When I step on set," says Kate, “I always feel like it's my first shoot and I always find myself on set in front of the camera, thinking: ‘What am I going to do? I've forgotten. I don't really know what I'm doing.’ Then as soon as the camera starts clicking, I find myself in character and once the first picture is done, that's when I feel that I know who I am in that story, in that puzzle.”

“I'm actually really shy in front of the camera. I don't like having my picture taken when it's not at work. I don't like having selfies or snapshots. I find it difficult to be myself in front of the camera. I find it much easier to be somebody else.”

2. Her first musical choice takes her back to 1989

“My friend had an Escort Mk 1 with roll bars, and he had speakers in the back of the car... and we would blast it down Croydon High Street and think we were the coolest people,” says Kate. “It was all about blasting it as loud as we could.”

Kate is talking about the song Back to Life by Soul II Soul. For the desert island Kate has chosen a special remix made especially for this programme featuring Kanye West’s Sunday Service Choir alongside Soul II Soul.

3. She wanted to broaden her horizons from an early age

Kate is one of Croydon’s most famous exports. Her father Peter worked for Pan American Airways.

“We used to go to America every summer. We went to LA, we drove down from San Francisco. We went to Hawaii, so we travelled a lot when I was a kid, so I knew that there was a big world out there.”

“I remember coming home from a holiday once and it was raining and grey and we got in my dad’s Beetle and it was cold – and I remember thinking I like American cars.”

“I like the way they smell, those rental cars in America. I like the way that they had those big seats at the front that you could sit across.”

“So I already had motivation to get out of Croydon,” says Kate laughing.

4. As a child she liked to play dressing up games — but with a difference

“As a little kid, I dressed my poor brother up as a girl,” says Kate, “He had blue eye shadow and a beauty spot and red lipstick and his name was Sylvia. And I used to get him to go outside — I'd dress him up and then make him go outside and knock on my front door — and let my mum answer, or my dad, and say: ‘Is Kate coming out to play?’ I must have been quite lonely.”

Kate remembers that she would have been around 10 at this time.

“I always remember saying, ‘Mum can somebody come over to play?’ and she'd be like: ‘Why do you always have to have somebody to play with?’”

“So I just obviously needed a girlfriend to play with, so I just made my brother a girl.”

5. Her mother tried to be strict but she wasn’t always successful

Kate describes her mother Linda as “always quite glamorous. She was fun.” She also says that she tried to be strict with Kate while she was growing up.

“I used to go to this Wednesday night student night down at Cinderella Rockerfellas and she would say to me: ‘Be home by midnight.’ One night I wasn't home, and she came in her dressing gown and dragged me out. Traumatising!” says Kate.

As a travel agent her father Peter was away a lot. "They kind of let me do what I wanted,” remembers Kate. “I think on my 13th birthday I had a party and he was upstairs doing the ironing and it was carnage downstairs and they just let me get on with it.”

Is that because they trusted her? “No,” says Kate. “I don't think they did trust me, but they couldn't really control me. I kind of did what I wanted, I just was very headstrong.”

6. A chance meeting on a plane changed her life

Aged 14, Kate was on her way home from a holiday in the Bahamas with her brother and father.

“I was sitting in economy somewhere,” says Kate. “And Simon, who was Sarah Doukas’s brother, came up to me on the plane and said: “My sister owns a model agency [Storm], she'd like to meet you.’“

“So I went to meet her in her seat and I recognised her from the Clothes Show Live. And so I knew she was a real model agent.”

“And they gave me their card and said: “When you get home, come and see us.”

"I would never ever have said to anybody: ‘I want to be a model’ because I just thought that was just vain and somebody who says that just thinks they're beautiful, and I never did.”

“I just thought, ‘Oh my God, I've just got to take a chance.’”

7. She has an original work of art by one of our greatest painters - on her thigh

In 2002 Kate had her portrait painted by the artist Lucian Freud and during one of the sittings he offered to give her a tattoo.

“He said, ‘Do you like the creatures of the animal kingdom?’ and I said ‘yeah, I like birds’ and he said ‘ooh I’ve done a bird!’ and he got the book out of his paintings and it was a chicken upside down in a bucket!”, she chuckles.

“And I said, ‘No, not really, not really what I was thinking. I was thinking more like the swallow in that book.’ And he gave me a bottle of really good Rothschild wine and he got out his etching needle and scraped into my thigh a flock of birds which now look like varicose veins!” she laughs.

“But I’m still probably the only living person with a Lucian Freud on my thigh.”

8. A Beatle wanted to buy her a Christmas present – and she turned him down

Kate was out shopping with Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithfull, buying last minute Christmas presents, when she suddenly spotted George Harrison through a shop window.

“He came out of the shop and said, ‘Is it you? Are you Kate Moss?’”

“I went, ‘Yeah I, am. Are you George Harrison?’ and he said, ‘Come in, come in, I want to buy you a Christmas present.’”

“He tried to buy me this - well, I wish I'd let him buy it for me, but I just couldn't let him because it was so disgusting - this jumper, but it would have been my jumper from George Harrison.”

"It was a cable knit, batwing pink sweater and I was like, ‘Please, I can't let you buy that for me,’ but I loved him so much.”

Kate has chosen George’s 1970 hit My Sweet Lord for her desert island. "[This song] was re-released the week he died and I couldn't stop crying. I was sobbing. I thought ‘What's wrong with me?’ I mean it's upsetting, but I could not stop crying and I found out I was pregnant with Lila. So that's my song with her, and for George.”

9. She wants to look after the next generation of models

Kate has her own agency, with clients including her own daughter, and she wants to make sure they avoid some of the challenges she faced early in her career:

“I've said to [Lila], you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. 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.”

“I take care of my models. I make sure that they are with agents at shoots so when they are being taken advantage of, there's somebody there to say, ‘I don't think that's appropriate.’ I don't know if that's across the board, but absolutely, that's what I can do.”