Here's the pdf, print out and read with a coffee!
Is is art, or is it bling? Siren, Marc Quin's solid-gold statue of Kate Moss went on show at the British Museum recently. But never mind the statue, what about the subject? What would Jesus say to Kate...
Talent-spotted as a youth, thrust in to the limelight, controversial from the start, offending public morals, on show sixteen hours a day, shadowed by the moral police and unable to trust your closest friends... Jesus and Kate Moss have a lot in common. It’s just that they have slightly different ways of coping with stress.
Oh, and being crucified in the press is not nearly as desperate as the real thing.
Back in 2001 the Daily Mirror published a story about Kate Moss and Pete Docherty which turned out to be so inaccurate that they had to print an apology and stump up "substantial damages and costs for distress and embarrassment caused".
But the Mirror took revenge four years later when it devoted four pages to a "debauched drink and drugs session", secretly photographed by one of their stooges. Not her finest hour, but did you know that the same edition of that paper ran a feature on "How to steal the style of the undisputed queen of boho... to get that stunningly chic Mossy look, just follow our magnificent seven tips". Now you might call that cheek, but Jesus has a stronger word for people who take the moral high ground on page two and brush it all aside by page ten: “Hypocrites!” I would hate to be a tabloid editor on judgment day.
Women in Kate Moss line of work pay a high price to be beautiful for the camera; they don’t eat... so they smoke and take cocaine instead: some models need all the help they can get to keep working and suppress their appetite, side effect of using cocaine.
Yet the Mirror’s revenge only enhanced her career. The fashion industry adores the fantasy of an edgy lifestyle; you see it in the names of perfumes: Opium, Addict, Crave, Rush. Andrew Groves’ 1995 show "Cocaine Nights" really gave the game away, featuring a dress made of razor blades and a catwalk strewn with white powder. As one irritated hack sneered, "Supermodel snorts cocaine” is as newsworthy as "Dog bites man". So Kate Moss made a rapid comeback, and became more marketable than ever.
And Jesus would say...
Of course, to get that ‘stunningly chic Mossy look’ you need more than seven style tips from the Mirror’s fashion editor. In addition to natural beauty you need the efforts of a world-class make-up artist and the wonders of Photoshop. No, this is not a put-down, underneath that death-mask she wears for the camera is a real woman who falls for people like Pete Docherty and wonders if anyone really loves her. Surely she wants to be more than just a pretty face?
I think that’s what Jesus would say; “Kate, why can’t you become more than just a pretty face?”
“You are loaded, give a chunk of it away; do an Audrey Hepburn – give your life to something big. You will find that, if you loose your life to serve a cause greater than yourself you will wake up one morning feeling more alive than you ever thought possible – you give your life to gain it, so to speak. This is living on the edge; it gives you a bigger hit than cocaine and doesn’t line the pockets of those bastards in Colombia.” (yes, I think he would use language like that)
The first supermodel
Maybe you’ve seen Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s? She played Holly Golightly, the quirky socialite who is outwardly sophisticated but secretly neurotic – brilliant performance! Truman Capote, who wrote the story, based Golightly on a real person, an elegant beauty called Dorian Leigh Parker.
In the 1950s and 60s Leigh Parker (pictured right) had the same public profile Kate Moss enjoys today: the face of Revlon's 'Fire and Ice' campaign, she was a household name at the top of her profession. She could rightly claim to be one of the first supermodels. Yet once, asked whether she would change anything about her life, she thought for a moment and answered, “Everything”.
But that was not the end of her story.
Dorian Leigh Parker's autobiography describes how she discovered someone who could meet her needs in a way no other can. In case you don’t get the time to read it, here is the relevant quote: “I'm not living for myself now; I am living for Christ. I know it sounds like something from Billy Graham, but I'm trying”.
Here’s the crux; whether you work in Top Shop, or you are on the books of Storm model agency you need two things: someone big enough to take the weight of your life and something big enough to give your life meaning.
You don’t get this from coke, or from a brilliant relationship with a wonderful bloke, you need someone bigger than that.