W March 2012 : Kate Moss by Steven Klein

[tarsha]

wmagazine.com

[ADLET]

^omg

[tarsha]

When I pore over these wonderful images of the model, designer, and eternal waif Kate Moss, firefly thoughts flit in and out of the dark halls of my mind. I think first of Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde’s amorality tale, who looks upon the portrait of himself in the fullest fruition of youth and wishes that it would age in his stead. Kate Moss seems to have always been with us—and to have always been as she is. Yet the truth is that she’s 38, twice married, and the mother of a 9-year-old girl. Her life has been a slalom through the toxicities of fame and success.

I look back to photos of Moss at the outset of her career, and I see the full and terrifying extent of her juvenescence: how much younger she seemed than she actually was. At 19 the revered and reviled face of “heroin chic,” Moss appeared to be in her Lolita teens. In her early 20s, she had the dégagé pout of a girl who has the right to vote but wouldn’t enter a polling booth unless you dropped it over her head. In catwalk footage from later on, Moss’s face had become streamlined, grown more feline, so that when emulating the swivel-hipped stride of her towering colleagues, she powered along the runway like a gilded hood ornament: inescapably British, the Rolls-Royce Spirit of Ecstasy gene-spliced—perhaps by some model-agent Dr. Moreau—with the iconic Jaguar.

Moss has aged and continues to age—not gracefully, for she’s a suburban hellion from the outer limits of Cockneydom, but beguilingly. The images seen here delight in the platinum and pearliness of her slightly skew-whiff teeth. I lose myself in the cold reactor shutdown of her brown-to-black eyes. As for that ever feted bone structure? Well, what to do but wax poetic about that perfect geometry: Moss’s mouth no rosebud but a crushed carnation, her cheekbones somehow performing the alien accomplishment of curving down to below its petals.
Dark Moss and Light Moss. Bad Kate and Good Little Katie—simple dichotomizing is not what this dyad deserves. I look at the pictures of Moss dressed in black and think perhaps they’re of a great beauty meditating upon her own inner ugliness. I try to divine the precise symbolism of the tattoo on her wrist: Is it piratical anchor or Coptic cross or some strange merging of the two? I think of Baudelairean decadence, and I’m hammered back into Dorian’s gilt frame.

But then the images of Moss in white are hardly a counterpoint to the ones where she’s in black: The lacy swathing is too opulent, the blonde hair is too blonde, the skin has both the pallor of an ice age and the sun’s queasy burnish. Moss, neither the most adroit of catwalk queens nor a fluid component of moving pictures, has always excelled at presenting herself in such static and iconic formats.

In the past few years, with scandal heaped upon bathos, her once legendary media froideur—no interviews, no comments—has been fractured in ways so prosaic that far from shattering her visual image, it has left it mysteriously shellacked. With each dull revelation, the glaze on those features becomes thicker and her essential self becomes even more enigmatic. She remains like a great silent-screen heroine who’s animated and reanimated and then reanimated again by the fizzing jolt of the kliegs. Long may it continue.

wmagazine

[timandnorah]

I'm absolutely speechless. This is stunning! If there is indeed an alternate, "bad side" cover, I hope it's just as good as this one.

[Chanelcouture09]

I kind of like what they've done with her, in an odd way and its not a typical Rock Chic attire most magazines tend to style her in, i guess this is typical Steven Klein for you, the whole religious reference, but i do like it.

The only thing thats bugging me are her teeth... i wish her mouth were closed a little more.

I knew i'd get this regardless of whether i liked it or not, purely out of a bias liking for Kate.

ETA : OH WOW! i love the new image posted... she looks kind of possessed! I'm just completely loving this so much! .

[maxlinden]

The cover is STUNTING!! Cant wait to see the full story

[fluxxx]

I love it! So Klein and Moss looks odd in the good way. Something kinda new from her. I like it so much and I love the Catholic theme for this ed/cover

[ALAUU]

Incredible. I swear, she's the greatest model in the world. You could do anything to that face. It's like she's a blank canvas. I love this cover so much!

[Melancholybaby]

I'm speechless . Finally, a magazine that doesn't style Kate in the stereotypical rock chic attire but does something completely different. Hopefully, the ''bad'' cover will be just as good as this one (lol).

[kokobombon]

I think she never looked so good with this amount of photoshop...
Stunning Cover. And the inside pic is stunningly creepy. I can´t wait to see more

[testinofan]

Biger



wmagazinepress.com

[Miss Dalloway]

Simply brilliant, wow, haven't liked any of her covers this much in a long time, same for Klein actually. Cant wait to see the other cover....

[kokobombon]

Looking at the bigger image, it actually has very little photoshop... you can see pores and wrinkles, it must be a first for a KM pic LOL
It makes me like it even more

Thanks for sharing, Gaby!

[tarsha]

I adore this, it's SENSATIONAL! One of the best covers of Kate ever! I can't wait to see if there's another cover and of course inside story!

Originally Posted by testinofan

wmagazinepress.com

There's no such site in the world!

[Melancholybaby]

Btw Craig McDean shot an ed for this issue, styled by Edward Enninful .