Kate Moss is sitting on the bed, surrounded by bags: zebra-patterned
purses to fortify her “wild girl” reputation;
shoulder bags to match her ever-youthful, hip look; and a sturdy tote, appropriately named Gloucester, for her oh-so-English country home.
“I am not doing it for different personalities — it’s what I like,” says Ms. Moss — or Kate, as she is known. At age 36, she has taken another step in her second life, as a designer rather than as a supermodel using her pretty face and sensual lips to promote other brands.
Her new collaboration with the bag company Longchamp grew from the advertising campaigns that she has done with the French leather house for eight seasons. The range has her personal label “Kate Moss for Longchamp” and uses images of the model at her most sultry, with end-of-a-long-night poses, hair tumbled and clothes misplaced as she cradles the bags.
The real Kate is funny, witty, down to earth and with a clear vision about this next step in her career. “I know bags, and I always want a bag to be functional and comfortable to hold,” she says, flipping the practical double handles of a small shoulder purse.
“As a woman with a lot of handbags, they have got to have a bit of flair, not too ‘Lady,’ with a bit of an edge,” she adds. “And it’s really important that Longchamp is an old family company — old school. They know how to make bags.”
First came the dreams. As with the clothing range she designs for TopShop, she turned to the favorites in her closet, “like a kind of dream world — you can perfect things you had in the past.”
Another dream for the rock ’n’ roll model is being in the 1960s and ’70s, “hanging out with Jimi Hendrix, Marc Bolan and Rod Stewart, when the men dressed so well — Brian Eno, that look he had was major.”
There is also the romantic Kate, the one who fell in love with the bias-cut dress that John Galliano gave her for her 21st birthday.
“I would have loved to have been a flapper girl in the ’20s and ’30s, dancing around with Cocteau and Scott Fitzgerald in Paris,” she says.
The reality of being a mother of a 7-year-old daughter, Lila Grace, and of working and traveling is that the Moss collection needs more than the elegant shagreen purses inspired by the antique boxes she has collected.
Sophie Delafontaine, creative director of Longchamp and granddaughter of its founder Jean Cassegrain, explains how a visit to Kate’s London home helped them to develop the wide range of bags that is intended to be a continuing project with the company, rather than the one-season collaborations it has had with the artist Tracey Emin and the architect Thomas Heatherwick.
For Kate herself, the inspiration might be a vintage object, like the zebra Gucci
travel bag that she saw in Los Angeles for $55,000 and which her partner Jamie Hince finally tracked down in San Francisco, enabling her to imagine the glam world of Elizabeth Taylor, when luggage was carried by porters and “didn’t touch the floor.”
