Though Kate Moss maybe the iconic fashionista who launched a million Diorific Addicts and Calvin Kleinesque Obsessions, the bottom-line is that her very real coke addiction may never go down with the fashion industry that has so long tried to maintain a clean but “always on a high” image.
The supermodel, who was beckoned as the "heroine" of the '90s is now as good as a “heroin chick”, having been seen on video snorting cocaine to provide the “shocking” revelation about an industry that plausibly encouraged substance abuse like no other, with the giants of cosmetics and clothing seeking that emaciated thin that Moss portrayed. Ironically it took the same medium of photo spreads in tabloids for the industry to reckon the damage that left the 31-year old mother, using her credit card to cut lines of coke and then a five pound note to snort them. In a jiffy she was as ready to make the pages, but this time an apologetic residue of the Kate Moss everybody had so far been concerned with. She may have apologized to the clothing giant H&M, her sponsor who believes that models need to be "healthy, wholesome and sound", but they never were apologetic for appreciating and promoting emaciation as healthy, wholesome or sound to the world.
Even worse, other high fashion companies and sponsors who were unsurprised or indifferent to Moss' behavior needed a huge public outcry in Britain to even call to question their sponsorship. Probably because they actively promoted as cool, the Kate Moss image of edgy and toxic “glamour” and sold it successfully to millions of women who thought that was being “the woman”.
While Moss remains desperate in many ways, of the public in forgiving her, of her child's father in allowing her to keep her most precious possession and of her sponsors in not losing faith in her, she needs to break free from her wild lifestyle. But as always, remorse comes a bit late in life, even if only late by eight days.
Moss driven on her knees may have just been able to rescue her contracts with Christian Dior and Rimmel, even while she lost big money with her Burberry ($950,000), Chanel ($1.8 million) and H&M ($1.2 million) deals unlikely to be renewed. She may “take full responsibility” for her actions but what happens to the scores of young girls who did everything possible to ape her. Her million dollar contracts may have helped her “accept various personal issues” that she needed to address but who will help those who may have gone as far as Kate Moss down the cocaine trail to be as iconic if not more.
The damage is done, whether she likes it or not Kate Moss the demi goddess has lost the throne and her reluctance to regret only made it worse. She may have seen nothing wrong to what she had done and so too may have her many million dollar sponsors, but she has wronged a generation of girls who grew up wanting to be waif-like and men who painted her slender body as the epitome of womanhood and the millions of women who felt inadequate for not being able to look like her.
Jefferson Hack, will seek to get his daughter Lila back and she may go through many years of counseling and de-addiction therapies, but nothing she does now is likely to wipe out her fall from the throne. For the perverts and the risqué seeking, there will remain numerous stories of Kate Moss' drug-fuelled sexual escapades that are reminiscent of any B grade porn movie flick.
