Kate Moss crowns comeback with own fashion range

By Anna Tomforde Apr 30, 2007, 13:40 GMT

Top model Kate Moss poses for the July page in the Pirelli 2006 calendar. EPA/MERT ALAS / MARCUS PIGGOT / HO

London - Kate Moss, the comeback kid, is back - with a vengeance.

'Cocaine Kate,' as the 33-year-old top model is also known, has swapped the catwalk for the design studio and is set to unleash shopper frenzy when her range goes on sale in Britain Tuesday.

Topshop, the leading fashion chain which has paid the model some 3 million pounds (6 million dollars) for her work, hopes that signing up Moss will be a launch-pad for expanding business into the United States.

While Topshop billionaire Philip Green is likely to be rubbing his hands in anticipation of Moss' selling power, the model is to fire shoppers' hysteria by posing with dummies in the window of the chain's flagship branch on London's Oxford Street.

In a last-minute change of plan, and in the clear hope of better crowd management, Topshop announced it would bring forward the opening of the Oxford Street store to Monday evening, allowing shoppers to enter 'in small groups' and to linger for no more than 20 minutes.

Customers will be allowed to try on a maximum of eight garments and buy 'just five pieces per person,' in what Topshop says is an attempt to curtail items being auctioned off at inflated prices on the e-Bay internet auction site.

The Moss collection, ranging from slim-cut waist coats to manly shirts, tight denim shorts, drainpipe jeans and mini-dresses, is available at affordable prices of between 3 and 150 pounds.

The range, it is said, is mostly made up of what the fashion icon 'would wear herself.'

However, some critics have predicted that the clothes will not exactly have mass appeal.

'Kate's size zero look might be winning her million dollar fashion contracts, but the average guy on the street prefers someone much more womanly,' said one fashion writer.

Moss, who was good at sports, but otherwise failed to shine at Riddlesdown Comprehensive in Croydon, near London, knows what she is doing when it comes to modelling.

She has not been off the catwalk since being spotted in 1988 at age 14 by a leading model agency representative at New York's JFK Airport, returning with her family from a holiday in the Bahamas.

Following her early ascent to fame as an advertising model for Calvin Klein underpants, waif-like Moss became the 'anti-supermodel' of the 1990s, a decade dominated by curvaceous, tall catwalk stars such as Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell.

This year's Sunday Times Rich List saw Moss enter the list of the 100 richest women in Britain with a personal fortune of 45 million pounds.

'The irony is that she doesn't want to be a celebrity. She just loves modelling,' maintains Sarah Doukas, the London agent who discovered Moss and says she has become like a daughter.

The trouble is, however, that Moss' fame rests as much on her propensity for drink and drugs as on her modelling, critics say.

Moss checked herself into a psychiatric centre in 1998, saying she had been 'drinking and getting high before getting on the catwalk.'

She revealed that she had been suffering from depression after separating from her longtime boyfriend, actor Johnny Depp.

Years of media claims that Moss was a regular cocaine user came to a head in 2005 when Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper published photographs showing her snorting several lines of the white powder in the recording studios of her 'druggy' boyfriend, notorious Babyshambles singer Pete Doherty.

Scotland Yard, which launched an investigation, dropped the case against Kate for 'lack of evidence' and cleared her of all charges.

Under pressure not to be identified with the 'negative role model' set by Moss, leading fashion houses Chanel, Burberry and H&M were among those that cancelled contracts with her.

Moss, meanwhile, admitted 'full responsibility' for her misdeeds, checked into a leading rehabilitation clinic in Arizona and announced a split from Doherty, 28.

The separation, however, did not last and the pair are consistently rumoured to plan to seal their stormy relationship with marriage.

Used to scandal, Moss has made it clear there is one thing that makes her boil: allegations that, through her lifestyle, she neglects Lila Grace, her four-year-old daughter from a relationship with magazine editor Jefferson Hack.

She was a 'fantastic mother,' Kate said through her agency, adding that Lila Grace was the one person in her life who made her happy.