Kate Moss turns 52 today, a fact that feels almost beside the point. Not because she looks implausibly young—though she does—but because she’s always existed outside fashion’s usual sense of time. Her style is not of the moment so much as gently brushing up against it.
What’s remarkable is not so much that Moss has been endlessly copied; it’s that she remains stubbornly uncopyable. For three decades, the fashion world has attempted to reverse-engineer her magic: the blazer and skinny jeans combo, leopard print and leather hotpants, more best-ever Glastonbury looks than you can shake a tambourine at, and an unexpected allegiance to butter yellow.
And yet, Kate Moss’s style has never been about just clothes. Her genius didn’t lie in adopting trends early, but in making them feel incidental—and not like trends at all. A fur coat over bare legs didn’t read as provocative—as it did with Marianne Faithfull, a friend and somewhat of a muse-mentor to Moss, decades earlier—it simply read as if she’d grabbed the nearest thing on the way out. It’s that metaphorical shrug that makes her style so difficult to replicate, much to the chagrin of so many girls in my E8 postcode.
Kate Moss Through The Ages
There’s also something quietly British about Moss’s fashion authority. It’s not aspirational in the glossy, transatlantic sense; it’s dry, ironic, perhaps even faintly amused by its own influence and lore. There’s also, of course, the enduring party-girl mythology to it all—her clothes and the way she wears them, not without care, but not overly careful either, if you follow. There’s always the suggestion of a life being led; perhaps the hefty catalogue of Getty Images of her stepping out of (and falling into) taxis best encapsulates this. Kate Moss made messiness chic long before we had “indie sleaze” as a handy catchall term.
Now, at 52, Moss represents a kind of style freedom that feels raringly radical. In an era obsessed with maxxxing—sleep, skincare, workouts, and wardrobes—her refusal to explain herself (“never complain, never explain,” as her ex Johnny Depp is rumoured to have advised her) is the ultimate flex.
“If you know who you are, you can get through,” Moss has said, and maybe that unwavering commitment to being oneself is the real legacy. This is why Moss has endured while aesthetics churn. The boho revival, the indie sleaze resurrection, the endless carousel of “Kate-core” TikToks all misunderstand her appeal. They treat her style as a checklist (leather jacket, skinny jeans, an even skinnier scarf) rather than the much more amorphous mood. Sure, you can buy the slip dress, the fuzzy fur coat—heck, you can even trawl the back alleys of eBay for pieces from her much-mythologised Topshop collections—but do any of us really have a chance of capturing that innate Kate Moss essence: the sense that you’d look exactly the same if no one were watching? We can but try, and try we will. Scroll on for our Editor’s Picks of the best Kate Moss–inspired styles.
