Kate Moss has opened up about a “horrible experience” she endured at the start of her modelling career.
During an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Moss said a male photographer asked to remove her bra during a catalogue shoot when she was just 15.
“He said ‘take your top off’,” Moss recalled. “I took my top off, and I was really shy then about my body, and he said ‘take your bra off’ and I could feel there was something wrong so I got my stuff and I ran away.”
Moss said the experience “sharpened her instinct” and gave her the ability to “tell a wrong ‘un a mile away”.
During the interview, Moss also said she has mixed feelings about a famous cover shoot she did with photographer Corinne Day for The Face magazine in 1990, when she was still only 16.
Moss told host Lauren Laverne that she “cried a lot” during the shoot because she felt uncomfortable being naked.
“I didn’t want to take my top off,” Moss said. “I was really, really self-conscious about my body and [Day] would say, ‘If you don’t take your top off I am not going to book you for Elle’ and I would cry.”
Moss added: “It is painful because [Day] was my best friend and I really loved her – but she was a very tricky person to work with. But you know, the pictures are amazing so she got what she wanted and I suffered for them, but in the end they did me a world of good. They did change my career.”
Moss now runs her own self-titled modelling agency with clients including Lila, her 19-year-old daughter. Lila Moss, who has Type 1 diabetes, recently posed with her insulin monitor in a joint shoot for Versace and Fendi.
Discussing the advice she has given to Lila, Moss said: “I have said to her 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,” Moss added. “I make sure they are with agents at shoots so when they are being taken advantage of, there is someone there to say ‘I don’t think that’s appropriate’. I don’t know if that’s across the board but that’s what I can do.”
Moss chose songs by artists include David Bowie, Soul II Soul and The Rolling Stones during the wide-ranging interview, which is available to stream here.
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