One of the biggest supermodels of the 1990s and a famous fixture on the London party scene, Kate Moss has been named the new creative director of Diet Coke.
So, Kate Moss has been busted for aligning herself with Coke. Again.
Yep. Many weren’t impressed, 17 years ago, when a newspaper ran photos of her apparently snorting lines of cocaine with then-boyfriend, musician Pete Doherty. Chanel, Burberry and H&M dropped her from campaigns, and London newspapers began questioning if she was a fit role model for teenage girls. But since Moss was named the new creative director of Diet Coke, early this month, many are, again, giving her the side-eye.
Credit: Diet Coke
Pressure to be skinny, and all that?
Well, the brand says it tapped her for her “unique aesthetic and style”. She launched four limited edition cans of the drink at a party in London, yesterday, which feature camouflage, lace, denim and leopard details, influenced by Moss’ “favourite fashion moments”.
But it was also Moss who famously can’t live down having said, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” This was the mantra that she and her model friends would sing when “we’d go for the biscuits”, Moss told a reporter in 2009. “Gross”, one person wrote on Twitter about the campaign, alluding to her association with the so-called “pro-ana” – or pro anorexia –movement, and encouraging people to be skinny, given her infamy as the gaunt face of “heroin chic” in the 1990s.
But when have celebrity endorsements not been marred by unfortunate connotations?
Moss (left), pictured with Naomi Campbell in the 90s, when Moss was the face of “heroin chic”, and, right, in 2009, when she told a reporter that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”.Credit: Getty Images
You’re talking about fashion designer Thierry Mugler who pulled one-time Olympian Oscar Pistorius as the face of his “A*Men Pure Shot” cologne, in 2013, after Pistorius was accused of (and later convicted of) murder. And former Sex Pistols’ lead singer Johnny Rotten fronting a 2008 campaign for Country Life Butter. And actor James Dean preaching the values of safe driving on the highway – urging young people to “Take it easy driving; the life you save might be mine” – in a promotional video for Warner Brothers, shortly before being killed in an accident on a Californian highway in 1955.
Exactly. So why not Moss?
Her reported $9 million payday will likely help cushion the blow from any further criticisms she may face. (Rotten was told by many that he’d “sold out”, and Mugler’s fragrance was called a “fallen star”.) But she’s got other reasons.
“I’m not just showing up and being a show-pony,” says Kate Moss, left, pictured DJ’ing at a launch for her limited edition Diet Coke cans in London, yesterday, alongside DJ Fat Tony.Credit: Dave Bennett/Getty Images
“I loved the idea of doing this because I have so many ideas,” she has said about the drink’s “Love What You love” Campaign. Moss will “continue to showcase the positive attitude of Diet Coke drinkers” at events in the UK throughout the northern hemisphere’s summer.
“It’s proper,” said Moss. “I’m not just showing up and being a show-pony... Being in front of and behind the camera was so exciting. Having full creative control of the look and feel of the campaign was a first for me.”
So fronting for Diet Coke is more liberating than starting her own modelling agency?
Possibly not. When she launched Kate Moss Agency six years ago, she said she was driven by her “maternal side”, and wanted to take care and nurture young models “so they grow to their full capacity in anything they’d like to do, instead of being used up and tossed out”.
But Moss, who began modelling at 14 after she was scouted at an airport, has been vocal about having herself felt “terribly uncomfortable” on shoots, over the years. “There was pressure to pose topless,” she told an interviewer four years ago. “I worked with a woman photographer, Corinne Day, and she always liked me with no top on. I did not like it all when I first started... “[I’d say on some jobs] Can I just put some clothes on?′ But that was the job and so we just kind of did it.’”
And Diet Coke is treated like holy water in the fashion industry.
Karl Lagerfeld once said he drank up to 10 cans of the drink in a day. “I drink Diet Coke from the minute I get up to the minute I go to bed,” he once told Harper’s Bazaar. “I can even drink it in the middle of the night and I can sleep.” It was part of a regime that, famously, helped him lose 92 pounds in 13 months. (He was desperate to fit into Saint Laurent clothing designed by the famously slim-hipped Hedi Slimane.)
So, not dietician-approved.
Hell no. The dangers of guzzling the drink were thrust into the spotlight in 2006 when 22-year-old South American model Luisel Ramos suffered a heart attack after stepping off a runway, following a three-month diet of green leaves and Diet Coke. Not to mention what happened to one woman who tried Lagerfeld’s famous diet.
“After three in quick succession, I get very jittery,” Rebecca Harrington wrote about downing the drink to mimic Lagerfeld’s Diet Coke habit. “After four I decide I’m so jittery I can’t eat lunch or write or concentrate and just start pacing my room, which seems, all of a sudden, like a necessary activity.”
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