Monday, January 26, 2009

Happy Birthday Kate!




Last week was not just a big week for Barack Obama. It was also Kate Moss’s 35th birthday and the 20th anniversary of her modeling debut! How do I know this? A post on Fashionologie which included an image gallery with the picture above titled “1998 Kate Moss photo exhibit.”

As I'm now becoming a well-known picture sleuth, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that in actuality it was 1995 and the location was the Danziger Gallery where we had a blowout exhibition to celebrate the publication of the first and to date only book of photographs of her. If you haven’t seen it, it’s still the best book of its kind and now goes for $300 to $600 on Amazon. The book and my show were designed by the talented art director Phil Bicker (formerly of The FACE) who covered one wall entirely with tabloid press clippings about Kate. (Which is what you see a fragment of in the picture.)

The other publication worth mentioning, although it’s currently unavailable on Amazon, is the Gianni Versace Couture Fall/Winter 1996/1997 catalog featuring Kate photographed by Richard Avedon.
It’s a trip back to his late 60s psychedelia and I’m just sorry the pictures never got printed. However as a tribute to both Kate and the late great Richard Avedon, here’s a selection of images from the catalog. I’m not quite sure where the Versace clothes went!












All pictures copyright The Richard Avedon Foundation.