Kate Moss Speaks (!) About That Calvin Klein Campaign, Johnny Depp & the Press

Even the most diehard fashion fan has only heard Kate Moss’s voice a couple of times. There was that Vogue UK video from last year, a YouTube clip of Moss backstage with Christy Turlington. (And this gem of Moss with Linda Evangelista and Jon Stewart for MTV’s House of Style.) But the fiercely private model rarely grants interviews. “When I first started out I did press because I wasn’t really aware that they would write something really horrible but then they did, and I was like: ‘Oh no, I don’t want to go back there. I don’t really want to open up myself to that kind of criticism.’” she told T in 2010.

And yet today, just how, Showstudio.com just released a nearly ten minute conversation between Moss and photographer Nick Knight, with whom she’s worked for over 20 years, as part of Knight’s Subjective series. Moss wears her sunglasses throughout the grainy, black and white clip, while Knight asks her about the Calvin Klein ad for Obsession, his 1985 fragrance, that turned Moss from a model into an international superstar. She says that Klein got his hands on Mario Sorrenti’s book, which was full of pictures of his then-girlfriend, Moss, on vacation, and thought, that’s it, that’s Obsession. “And it was obsession,” Moss says. “I would wake up in the morning and he’d be taking pictures of me and I’d be like f*** off! And I lay like that for like 10 days; he would not stop taking pictures of me.” She adds, “We split up after that…I didn’t want to work all the time.”

On Johnny Depp, she simply says, “Whatever,” before diving into the time of stretch limos and early morning Concorde flights because she’d been out partying too late the night before.

Is it ever weird to see yourself on every passing bus? Every billboard? Knight asks Moss. “I think you have to be a bit grounded about things like that. I’m from Croydon and if you get above your station somebody will f***ing knock you down.”