‘She’s partied hard & lived dangerously’ As Kate Moss turns 50, Fabulous reveals what prompted her to clean up her act
‘She’s partied hard and lived dangerously. People worried Kate would go too far one day’
AS Kate Moss prepares to turn 50, showbiz writer Louise Gannon reveals what prompted the party queen to clean up her act – and why her milestone birthday is bittersweet.
There will be no debauched bash when former party queen Kate Moss turns half a century on January 16.
In fact, all mention of (whisper it) number 50 has been banned by the Croydon-born supermodel-turned-wellness guru, who last year said: “I’m not turning 50. I’m not thinking about it. I do not feel 50.”
Rather than candles, her birthday cake – which is always her favourite Victoria sponge, albeit these days made with strawberry jam from a crop at Kate’s country home in Little Faringdon, Oxfordshire – will instead be decorated with a single lily.
Cigarettes and champagne, once never far from her grasp, will be nowhere to be seen.
And while the lack of alcohol and tobacco is a tribute to the past five years she has spent working on her sobriety, the lily (also the motif on her 2011 wedding cake to her ex-husband, rock star Jamie Hince) is a tribute to what she calls her “real achievement in life”: her model daughter Lila.
As she told British Vogue last month: “Now she’s 21, Lila’s the one setting rules for me: wear SPF50, quit smoking…
“I feel like I’d already lived quite a few lives by Lila’s age.
“I’d gone abroad.
“I’d had one serious boyfriend – and had moved on to the next.
“In a lot of ways, though, Lila is so much more grown-up than I was in my 20s.
“She understands she can say no, for one thing, which I never did, and she has the right people around her – I’ve made sure of that.
“And let’s face it, she’s a lot more sensible than I was back then.
“I mean… thank god. Ha!”
‘Her 30th is rumoured to have ended the following day in an orgy at Claridge’s’
Now, those wild times are long gone, and Kate’s infamously raucous birthday parties are a thing of the past.
Her 21st, organised by her then-boyfriend Johnny Depp, was held at the notorious Viper Room on LA’s Sunset Boulevard, with a special birthday performance by the late INXS star Michael Hutchence.
The theme for her 30th was “The Beautiful and The Damned”, with guests including Stella McCartney, Naomi Campbell and Rolling Stones rocker Ronnie Wood.
Rumour has it that the party went over to the next day, ending in an orgy at Claridge’s Hotel.
For Kate’s 33rd, things started casually with oysters and champagne for herself and then-boyfriend The Libertines’ frontman Pete Doherty, at Scott’s restaurant in Mayfair, before partying until lunchtime the following day (with Doherty dipping out to appear in court on drugs charges) and spending more than £5,000 in the process.
Meanwhile, her 35th was a four-day bender with celebrity mates including Sadie Frost and Davinia Taylor, and her 42nd – held at her Cotswolds home – was a tribute to her friend David Bowie, with guests including Boy George.
For her “not-50th birthday”, Kate is expected to host a series of small events for her inner circle.
The guest lists will include her partner of eight years, photographer Count Nikolai von Bismarck, 37; his mother, socialite Debonnaire Jane Patterson (who introduced Kate to her son); stylist Katy England and her husband, Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie; celebrity hairdresser James Brown and fellow Croydon fashion legend John Galliano; her ex-partner and Lila’s dad, publisher Jefferson Hack; her closest pals, actress Sadie Frost and model Naomi Campbell; and, of course, Lila, who is now based in New York.
Kate will also celebrate with her extended family – although there will be no rapprochement with her half-sister, model and reality star Lottie, who she believes has dragged the Moss name downmarket.
‘Lottie has gone down the sort of celebrity route that her sister Kate despises’
Lottie, 25, who posted images to her OnlyFans account from privacy-obsessed Kate’s home, has recently complained about being shunned by her half-sister, saying their relationship is so distant that “she doesn’t reply to my texts”.
“Lottie loves publicity – the wrong sort of publicity,” says a friend of Kate.
“She’s trash-talked Kate publicly and she’s gone down the sort of celebrity route that Kate despises.
“She did try with Lottie.
“She was a bridesmaid at her wedding, but she has very different values to Kate.
“Whatever Kate has done, she is always classy and cool.
“She’s been through her wild days.
“She wouldn’t want Lila to in any way be influenced by Lottie.”
In truth, 50 is a bittersweet birthday for Kate.
At the London celebration of her 21st at the Cobden Working Men’s Club (where she spent most of the night at the bar with her mum), Kate memorably told me: “I don’t care about a lot of things.
“All I want from life is to end up with a man who loves me forever – that’s the dream.”
At 50, she has loved and lost many times over, but has shared her life with Nikolai for the past eight years.
Despite rumours of a split earlier this year, the couple made it clear they were still an item when they showed up arm-in-arm in Paris ahead of Fashion Week last September.
Her friend says: “Kate and Nikolai don’t have a conventional relationship, but they do really have a lot of love for each other.
“They have their ups and downs.
“He spends a lot of time in London and they are both busy, but Kate has been a huge influence in his life.
“She really wants this to work.
“Ultimately, Kate would love to be married, but who knows what will happen?
“They are good as they are right now.
“This is Kate’s longest and most stable relationship, so they are doing something right.”
A former comprehensive-school girl from south London, born to dad Peter, a travel agent, and mum Linda, a barmaid, Kate never expected to take over the world.
After being scouted at New York’s JFK Airport, aged 14, she doubted she’d get a single modelling job, due to her “bow legs and crooked teeth”.
But to date, Kate has amassed a personal empire reportedly worth £55.5million, launching her own eponymous modelling agency in 2016, as well as wellness brand Cosmoss last year.
Having sold up in London in 2022, home is now the 10-bedroom, seven-bathroom Grade-II-listed house she bought in Oxfordshire 12 years ago.
It’s stuffed with her valuable art collection, which includes paintings by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.
In keeping with her reinvention, Kate will begin her birthday – as she does every day – with yoga, meditation and daily affirmations.
She also follows a rigorous skin regime of cleansing, exfoliating and moisturising with products from her own range.
She has admitted to friends that saying sober is a daily struggle and, since her decision in 2018 to clean up her act, has had to allow herself momentary slips, including the occasional cigarette.
She said: “The bad things I have done usually take their toll, and I’ve been quite lucky in that respect, but you have to put in the work.”
Kate’s transformation has not been easy – but it was one she was determined to make.
It began in a moment of personal tragedy when, in 2018, her close friend and fellow Primrose Hill party pal, Annabelle Neilson, died at the age of 49 of a stroke.
Annabelle, a former model and heroin addict, had been a huge influence on Kate.
Her death came a year after the passing of Kate’s other great mentor, Anita Pallenberg, ex-partner of Rolling Stones legend Keith Richards and whose wild lifestyle scandalised society in the ’60s and ’70s.
Kate’s friend said: “That was the moment Kate decided she really needed to change her lifestyle.
“When people you love die, you feel so bereft and you don’t want the people in your life to ever feel like that.
“For Kate, it was a moment to look at what she had, look at how she lived, and a realisation that she loved what she had and wanted to hang on to it.
“A lot of her friends, like Sadie Frost, Meg Mathews and Lily Allen, had either become sober or were talking about health and sobriety, and a lot of her former friends, like Pearl Lowe and Davinia Taylor had been sober for years.
“Kate was always the leader, never the follower.
“But in 2018, she decided she, too, would join the sober crowd.”
There were many friends back in the Noughties who feared the model – nicknamed “The Tank” for her ability to consume large quantities of drugs and alcohol – would never live to see her 50th.
One says: “Kate broke the mould as a model.
“She was this kid from Croydon who wasn’t exactly model height, she wasn’t exactly beautiful, but she had this cool star quality.
“She brought rock ’n’ roll to the modelling world.
“She lived fast, partied hard, dated edgy musicians and actors and had this incredible boho-luxe look that people couldn’t get enough of.
“But Kate was dangerous.
“Her lifestyle was dangerous.
“She went right to the edge and there were times when a lot of people around her worried about her going too far – especially when she got together with Pete Doherty.”
In fact, even her friend Keith Richards – known as one of the wildest men in rock ‘n’ roll for his excesses with drugs and alcohol – warned her to stay away from Pete, even speaking out in an interview to tell him to “shut the f*** up and leave her alone”.
His band mate Ronnie Wood likewise said: “I worry about Pete, like I worry about Kate, because she’s a lovely person and I want her to stay on an even keel.”
‘Post-Pete, Kate worked hard to reinstate herself as the ultimate It Girl’
Introduced by mutual friends at her 31st birthday party, Kate and Pete became an item within days, riding on buses through London wearing wigs and sunglasses.
Within a week, they both had tattoos of each other’s initials inside hearts.
Although Kate’s fondness for cocaine had long been a staple of showbiz gossip – particularly during the Primrose Hill years when she was a fixture at parties thrown by Meg Mathews and then-husband Noel Gallagher – Pete was known for his unashamed use of heroin and crack cocaine.
Despite all the rumours around Kate, she was careful never to allow any details of her lifestyle to slip into the public domain.
Pete’s own circle was far less careful of her reputation.
In 2005, photos of Kate taking cocaine were sold to The Daily Mirror by a member of the entourage that “sponged off Doherty”.
Within a week, she’d lost contracts from Burberry, Chanel and H&M, reportedly totalling close to £2million.
But despite going to rehab and pressure from her team to drop Pete, Kate continued her relationship with him for another two years.
The end was typically dramatic and stormy, with Kate smashing up his Gibson guitar and dousing his beloved teddy bear with petrol and setting it alight.
As Pete recently wrote in his autobiography: “I was always dodging bullets, it [the relationship] became like the Vietnam War.”
Post-split, Kate worked hard to reinstate herself as the ultimate It Girl, signing a £3million deal with Topshop to produce 14 collections based on her own wardrobe.
Women lined the streets to be the first to buy the outfits in Britain and America – and Kate proved she was back on top.
After Pete came another rock star, British-born guitarist of The Kills, Jamie Hince.
They were introduced shortly after her split from Pete, with Jamie famously telling Kate their relationship would never work unless she calmed down her partying.
In 2010, he proposed to her in bed during a trip to Amsterdam, giving her a ’20s ring worth £10,000.
They married the following year at St Peter’s Church in Southrop, Gloucestershire, but by 2015, they had separated and Kate began dating Nikolai.
It seems Kate never did find her one great love, but it is to her credit that she remains on good terms with all but one of her former lovers – Pete Doherty.
In 2022, she testified for Johnny Depp during his acrimonious court case with actress Amber Heard, and she’s frequently met up with Jamie during trips to LA.
‘These days, Kate talks about wild swimming, moon-bathing and cleansing crystals’
As she hits “not 50”, Kate has cemented her status as a fashion and cultural icon, built a multimillion-pound empire from scratch, and her hard-fought transformation seems complete.
These days in interviews, she talks about her passions for wild swimming, moon-bathing, cooking roast dinners and cleansing her crystals under a full moon.
“Kate has had bigger birthdays in her life than most people, but she’s got older, she’s got wiser, she’s got – if you dare say it – way more sensible.
“She does really look after herself now,” her friend says.
“She’s still, deep down, the Kate she always was.
“She loves a laugh, she loves dressing up and she loves being naughty.
“She’s still the most glamorous woman I know, but she’s done with the dark, the wild, the outrageous.
“She might have a little flirt with it every now and again, but she wants to enjoy what she has and look after herself for a long time to come.”
Happy birthday, Kate!
