Kate Moss has been uncharacteristically chatty lately. In the August Vogue She Who Never Opens Her Mouth (unless to hang a strand of David Yurman diamonds from it) “opens up” to Plum Sykes for her cover profile, and in the September Interview she “opens up” to Glenn O’Brien for her cover Q&A. We nearly threw out our backs when we realized Kate Moss talked to journalists enough for two back-to-back cover stories, but she has a reason for being so loquacious: She’s promoting her imminent autumn/winter Topshop line. And if she can get the world to fall in love with Kate the Person, then the world will buy her clothes — a diabolical plan, indeed. Actually, we imagine Kate loathed this sucking-up-to-journalists exercise (we’d hate to suck up to us, too), so we decided to do her a favor and scientifically analyze which story presented her as a more likable human being. Herewith, The Kate Moss Likability Index:
Kate Moss in Interview:
• Kate tells Glenn O’Brien she freaked out when she met Bob Dylan: “We finally did shake. And then I fainted!” PLUS 2 because anyone can identify with the feeling of dying after meeting one of the world’s icons. We barely made it out alive after we met Karl Lagerfeld.
• When Kate met Frank Sinatra at his 80th-birthday party, he cornered her and kissed her instead of, like, shaking her hand. “He was fabulous,” Kate says. MINUS 1 because what twenty- or thirtysomething actually likes kissing an 80-year-old? Just because it was Frank Sinatra doesn’t mean she has to pretend.
• “All those Pucci numbers and things that I wore when I was 17 that I won’t really wear … I’m saving them for [my daughter Lila] really … Now she’s a fashion freak.” PLUS 4 because we kind of want to be that cool of a mom.
• “Lila says she’s going to get married three times. She’s going to have three husbands, and she knows exactly who they are.” MINUS 3 because she should probably teach her kid that having three husbands would be a big fat mess instead of a good thing.
• “Glenn O’Brien: …who’s more diabolical, men or women?
Kate Moss: Men, for sure!
GO: Why?
KM: ‘Cause they’re cunts!
GO: Men are cunts?
KM: Absolute bastards!” PLUS 6 because word.
• “I had this amazing PA, and we used to pack together, and she got so used to what I wanted to pack that she got to point where she would just do it all — and perfectly. Now she’s away having a baby, and I have completely forgotten how to do it … my suitcase is a mess if I do it myself.” MINUS 4 because no one “forgets” how to fold clothes and put them in a suitcase.
• “I’m bidding in an auction on one of James Brown’s suits. It’s ivory with gold epaulets and gold buttons. I met James Brown! I danced with him on the runway at one of Thierry Mugler’s shows. He was singing “Sex Machine” and I was dancing in a ball gown, and he turned around and danced with me.” PLUS 26. Do we even need to explain?
• “GO: Envy?
KM: Oh yeah, that’s a sin. Definitely. I mean, I’ve never committed it, but it’s bad.” MINUS 12 because she says earlier she used to want to have Cindy Crawford’s breasts and height. Don’t lie to us, Kate.
• On why she’s hot past the age of 30: “I could talk when I was 20. I’m a lot better in the sack now.” PLUS 6 for giving us twentysomethings something to look forward to.
• “Corinne Day made me less conscious of myself. I was 15, and she’d make me take off my top, and I’d cry. After five years, you get used to it, and you’re not self-conscious anymore.” MINUS 7 because that’s extraordinarily creepy.
TOTAL: Plus 17 likability.
Kate Moss in Vogue
• Sykes writes, “The reason she won’t do Botox is that if a photographer asked her to frown in a picture and she couldn’t, she’d be ‘really embarrassed.’” PLUS 5 because this is the age issue, after all, and their thirties icon should promote stuff like that.
• When Sykes interviews Moss in Philip Green’s office where she’s about to have a meeting to talk about her Topshop line, “a leopard-print cotton trench coat that Vogue editor ‘Candy Pratts Price gave me fifteen years ago’ is thrown over the back of her chair.” MINUS 2 for masturbatory Vogue prose.
• Sykes writes, “Of course, being ahead of absolutely everyone is Kate’s gift, and the product she is now selling.” MINUS 3 for how utterly obnoxious that sentence is.
• Says John Galliano, “She is a chameleon who captures the now like no one else I know.” PLUS 1 because though it annoys us to all hell, that line is kind of amazing.
• Sykes interviews Kate in her garden on a fur rug strewn with leopard-print pillows while she drinks white wine and smokes a cigarette. PLUS 6 because we wish we had a carpeted garden with throw pillows we could drink and smoke in. Also, PLUS 1 for drinking during the daytime interview.
• “Kate rifled through a boxy white Chanel handbag lying on the rug, one of at least 100 Chanel purses she owns,” writes Sykes. “She retrieved a heavy glass bottle filled with her pale-pink Kate perfume, which she sprayed on my wrist.” MINUS 5 because no one carries their perfume around with them and sprays unsuspecting journalists with it.
• Sykes writes, “Despite, or perhaps because of, an ensuing cocaine scandal, Kate has emerged as a more influential fashion icon than ever, the paradox being that while Moss on the one hand excited condemnation, those who disapprove of her still can’t help being interested in her, or deny her talent with clothes.” PLUS 2 for mentioning the cocaine thing, lest we ever forget.
• Says Sir Phillip Green, “When she wants something, she calls me up and goes, ‘Uncle Phil, Uncle Phil, please…’” PLUS 2 because it works and we would do the exact same thing.
TOTAL: Plus 7
And there you have it: No matter how many of the world’s most famous designers Vogue gets to say nice stuff about a person, the more authentic Q&A presented in Interview is considerably more appealing (we’d argue that Plum Sykes’s writing hurt Kate’s score in this one, too). It doesn’t hurt to look like you’re on a mission to kick someone’s ass in your cover shot either.
Glenn O’Brien Interview with Kate Moss [ONTD]
View From the Top [Vogue]
