KEY POINTS:
LONDON - Supermodel Kate Moss is back on the cover of Vogue, but this time it is with a difference.
She is wearing one of her own designs and it costs just £60 ($168), a far cry from the pricey haute couture outfits that regularly grace the pages of the monthly glossy.
In the magazine's April issue, which hits newsstands in Britain on Monday, the 33-year-old showcases her collection for high street retailer Topshop, which recruited Moss as a designer in September.
"I'd talked to lots of people in the business about designing my own thing," Moss told Vogue in a rare interview to accompany pictures of the collection.
"Everyone said I should do something, but I didn't want to be a 'designer' designer and have to do shows and all of it."
Topshop is banking on a combination of arguably the most famous face in fashion, whose rock'n'roll lifestyle brings with it plenty of media attention, and cheap but chic clothes.
"The mix of the most successfully fashionable high street store and the supermodel whose personal style is emulated by millions was unlikely to fail," said Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman, who conducted the interview.
Moss has proven herself to be a major influence over what young women wear, credited with the return to fashion of skinny jeans, mini-dresses and hot-pants.
Last year, when Moss was photographed carrying a bag costing three pounds ($8) by low-cost drugstore Superdrug, it was an instant sellout.
The Topshop collection is due to launch in 300 British stores on May 1 and 30 outlets internationally. A selection will also be available online.
The collection marks the latest stage in a remarkable career comeback for Moss, who was dubbed "cocaine Kate" in 2005 when a tabloid newspaper printed pictures of the model apparently snorting cocaine.
Moss has neither confirmed nor denied the story, but did issue a statement apologizing for her behaviour. She was not charged over the allegations.
Several labels severed ties with Moss in the wake of the reports, but she has quickly returned to the pinnacle of her profession and was named Model of the Year at British fashion's answer to the Oscars in November.
The drug scandal and her on-again, off-again relationship with troubled rock star Pete Doherty, has made Moss a paparazzi favorite, and in Vogue she described being hounded by the press.
"There are degrees of privacy," she told the magazine. "If I'm taking Lila to school, that's not OK," she said, referring to her four-year-old daughter.
"Once I was walking down from The Mercer (hotel) in New York down the street (because otherwise I don't walk anywhere) and this woman paparazzo who was following me fell over a fire hydrant and her whole tooth went through her lip.
"I leant over her saying, 'Are you all right?' and she was still taking pictures. I was, 'You know what? You are sick in the head.' And she was really surprised that I had stopped. Like she thought I was going to leave her bleeding?"
(Additional reporting by Rachel Sanderson)
- REUTERS
