I was only 15 when sleazy agent demanded I remove my bra during shoot, says Kate Moss
KATE Moss tells today how she fled a model casting aged just 15 after a leering male agent demanded that she take off her bra for him.
The supermodel, 48, who was discovered at just 14, was alone at a bra catalogue job when he asked her to strip.
But Kate maintains the “horrible experience” sharpened her instincts, and she says: “I can tell a wrong ’un a mile away.”
In a rare interview, she reveals she was “really self-conscious” about her body — and she also opens up about her anger in the wake of the 2005 cocaine video.
And she admits her famous Calvin Klein campaign — posing with Mark Wahlberg in 1992 — left her “objectified, vulnerable and scared”.
Speaking about her earliest modelling experiences, Kate tells Lauren Laverne on today’s Desert Island Discs: “I had a horrible experience for a bra catalogue and I was only 15, probably.
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“He said, ‘Take your top off’ and I took my top off and I was really shy about my body, and he said, ‘Take your bra off’.
“I could feel there was something wrong, so I got my stuff and I ran away.”
Kate’s career really took off after she appeared in a 1990 shoot for The Face by photographer Corinne Day.
Global stardom arrived two years later after she was in a Calvin Klein campaign alongside Mark Wahlberg.
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But Kate said both experiences are painful to remember, and she “suffered” for the shots that made her.
She told Lauren of The Face shoot: “That scrunched-up nose that they used on the cover . . . Corinne would say, ‘Snort like a pig’ to get that picture.
“I would say, ‘I don’t want to snort like a pig,’ and she said, ‘Snort like a pig, that’s when it looks good’.
“I cried a lot (about) being naked. I didn’t want to take my top off, I was really, really self-conscious of my body and she would say, ‘If you don’t take your top off, I won’t book you for Elle’ and I would cry.
“It is difficult (to remember) it’s painful, because she was my best friend and I really loved her but she was a very tricky person to work with.
“But the pictures are amazing, she got what she wanted, and I suffered for them.
“But in the end they did me a world of good really — they did change my career.”
Her time with Wahlberg evoked “not very good memories”.
Kate explained: “He was very macho and it was all about him. He had a big entourage and I was just this kind of model. I felt completely objectified, vulnerable and scared.
“I think they played on my vulnerability. I was quite young and innocent . . . Calvin loved that.
"Luckily I was living with Mario (Sorrenti, her then-boyfriend) and his mum Francesca and she insisted she come with me because I really didn’t feel at all well before the shoot.
“For a week or two I couldn’t get out of bed. I had severe anxiety and the doctor gave me Valium, but she said, ‘You’re not having those pills’.
“The anxiety would manifest as nausea, and if I felt nauseous she would give me a quarter of Valium, or a half, but she never gave me the whole bottle.”
Kate went on to work with Corinne again for Vogue in 1993.
Photographed in her own flat, the results saw Kate labelled the poster girl for heroin chic.
They were criticised for promoting anorexia because of her waif-like figure.
But Kate says: “I was never anorexic. I never have been. I had never taken heroin. I was thin because I didn’t get fed at shoots or in shows, and I’d always been thin.”
Then, in September 2005, the mum of one was photographed snorting cocaine while in a relationship with singer Pete Doherty.
She was dropped by seven companies including Chanel, Burberry and H&M — losing an estimated £4million.
Kate said: “I felt sick and was quite angry because everybody I knew took drugs, so for them to focus on me and try to take my daughter away, I thought was really hypocritical. I kind of had to apologise, really.”
She also defended her decision to back John Galliano and Johnny Depp after they were publicly disgraced.
Fashion designer John, 61, was vilified over anti-Semitic rants in a bar in 2011.
Shortly afterwards Kate chose him to design her wedding dress as she married Jamie Hince.
Earlier this year she testified in support of actor ex Johnny Depp, 59, amid claims he had pushed her down the stairs.
Kate said: “I believe in truth and I believe in fairness and justice. I know that John Galliano is not a bad person.
“He had an alcohol problem and people turn. People aren’t themselves when they drink, and they say things they would never say when they were sober.
"I know the truth about Johnny. I know he never kicked me down the stairs.”
Kate, who has moved out of London to live full-time in the Cotswolds, says her party days are over, adding: “I’m not really into being out of control anymore.”
Instead, she says she is obsessed with gardening.
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Since 2016, she has also run the Kate Moss Agency with daughter Lila, 19, among its models.
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And she went on: “I make sure they are with agents at shoots so when they are being taken advantage of, there’s someone there to say, ‘That’s not appropriate’.”
- DESERT Island Discs, BBC Sounds & Radio 4, today, 11.15am.
