When Kate Moss was appointed Diet Coke’s creative director, she had large shoes to fill, but she didn’t draw her inspiration from John Galliano or Karl Lagerfeld. Andy Warhol was there. While in Los Angeles, the supermodel used The Warhol Diaries as a meditation tool and fell for the robotic-voiced artist’s lovely and vulnerably endearing allure. The Factory idea appealed to me, adds Moss, who is wearing the perfect rendition of Kate’s signature leopard print and exquisite tailoring ensemble. “I appreciated how he kept it simple and how everyone was a member of the team.”
Kate put together her Factory-style team for the Diet Coke Love What You Love campaign on stage one, including stylist Katy England, makeup artist Isamaya Ffrench, hairstylist Syd Hayes, and photographer Quentin Jones. They visited Moss’s archive in phase two. It’s rather big, deadpans Kate as she lets out her signature chuckle, the husky type brought on by a lifelong addiction to cigarettes. To find the greatest leopard print, camouflage, lace, and denim to photograph Diet Coke’s new face in, England, a dear friend, and Lila Moss’ godmother, combed through decades’ worth of clothing, many of which Kate thought she had lost and has only lately collected and documented.
Because it’s intended to be Moss, the limited-edition Diet Coke cans feature her campaign looks as well as a portrait that her friend Tim Rockins drew of her for her 40th birthday. Moss explains, “It couldn’t be items from a new collection, because it’s supposed to be me.”
She claims of her timeless fashion that “I know instantly what I admire” that it does translate to soft drink packaging (the glitter-encrusted can is her favorite). Jones, who Moss incidentally remembered previously meeting on a boat in Jamaica (such as the way in her group), took charge of the shoot while loud music played and frankincense filled the air.
Moss says of Quentin, “She understood what she wanted and she didn’t mess around. She trusted her friends not to try to change me into someone else. Because of this, it is genuine. For Kate, who acknowledges her style has hardly changed since she first started as a vivacious Croydon girl who never complained and never explained, these vintage Moss fashion moments are a rare glimpse into the past. The most frequent cover girl for British Vogue muses, “Maybe in a few decades, I’ll take out the Marc Jacobs style I wore when I was 25, but at the moment it’s too near.” At 48, she may even look younger than she did in her twenties.
What riches has Moss Junior already discovered? She could not comprehend the short miniskirt that exposed her underwear. Kate comments, citing another instance when Lila asked about donning nipple pasties with a revealing top, “They are so prudish nowadays.” Her mother was horrified. Wear pasties sparingly! My advice to the younger generation is that. At the launch of her cans, where Moss sang a karaoke cover of Diana Ross and Lionel Richie’s “Endless Love,” another of her famous cackles erupts and looks even more delicious thanks to a Diet Coke-red lip applied.
Of course, she has advised 19-year-old Lila, whose first word was a shorter form of “paparazzi,” in addition to liberating the nipple.
Kate recently persuaded Lila to choose the tall boots and dazzling blue lame minidress she fell in love with when shopping in Marc Jacobs. Kate prefers to buy in New York and Paris rather than London. But Mom, no one wears this, the teen argued. Kate responded, “No one wore a ’30s frock and trainers when I was your age! Touche. Later that day, at lunch, Lila, dressed in full Jacobs, acknowledged feeling similar to Blake Lively from Gossip Girl.
“People are all afraid to be themselves, and I think they should wear how they want,” adds Moss, who is still a fashion icon and draws her ideas from vintage movies, photos, and periodicals. Although Kate herself doesn’t have any regrets about her choices in clothing because “you can’t have regrets,” she does remember one unforgettable V&A gown that came apart throughout the event. “I walked in looking like Veronica Lake and came out as Courtney Love,” jokes Moss, whose hair is artfully brushed back into a low bun to emphasize her cheekbones, which are, by the way, more prominent in real life. The media praised it.
Even though her newly organized archive might not have included that fateful outfit, it doesn’t matter. Moss values her 1920s flapper outfits, Vivienne Westwood, and John Galliano the most. In the event of a fire, what would she keep? a break. Oh, many of things really, muses Moss, an enigma who only ever shares fragments of herself yet manages to utterly captivate us with each one. The most recent chapter in Kate’s story is when she had her Diet Coke moment.
