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Among the thousands of famous photographs of Kate Moss, there’s one that has come to be emblematic of several things at once: a sybaritic British summer, the early noughties boho aesthetic, the dawn of festival fashion, the supermodel’s own inimitable style. She’s walking through a field at Glastonbury in 2003, wearing a pale pink tunic dress with black fringed moccasin boots, a printed silk scarf knotted around her hips and her face semi-obscured by a combination of sunglasses and a curtain of dirty-blonde hair.
The look pre-dated Instagram and influencers, and yet it had the sort of impact today’s young tastemakers could scarcely dream of. Some 22 years on, now that festival wardrobes are curated with military precision and documented ad nauseam online, it’s interesting to contemplate exactly how much thought went into Kate’s oft-emulated outfit. Not a lot, it turns out.
“Planned outfits never work for me,” says Moss with a shrug. “I don’t do that.” She couldn’t have known the clothes she threw together that year would ultimately become a sort of cultural touchstone, but she did get some inkling of the stir she’d created over the course of the weekend. “I went to get some breakfast on my own, and there was one photographer,” she remembers of that morning outing in her pink dress. “It wasn’t a paparazzi-fest then.” The next day, a friend told her she’d made the papers. “We’d gone to see Chas Dave and he told me: ‘You’re on the cover of The Sunday Times,’” she says with her signature cackle. “I was like, ‘Don’t be stupid!’”
Moss is reflecting on her Glastonbury memories (2003 in particular was “a vintage year – so much fun”) in the Penthouse at Koko in Camden, surrounded by her second collection for Zara, which represents a chance to be dressed for the summer by the woman who invented festival style – even if unintentionally. For her sophomore project for the high-street retailer, Kate went into her storage (a truly tantalising thought for anyone raised on a diet of pap shots of Moss outfits) with her collaborator, the stylist Katy England, and emerged with armfuls of old favourites to inform the sheer skirts, bodysuits and leather bralettes that now surround us in the suite.
There’s menswear this time around, too, care of Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie, husband to England and old friend to Moss. Gillespie, softly spoken but every inch the rock frontman in distressed denim and a military jacket of his own design, chimes in from the sidelines as Kate, sylphlike in taupe suede trousers and tanned from a trip to La Colombe d’Or, flicks through the rails, narrating as she goes. She brandishes a silvery pair of metallic shorts (“These will get you attention!”) and a white smock with delicate red embroidery that’s “exactly the same as a vintage top I have”. She can’t resist modelling the fringed bikini (“So you can go under the hosepipe or down the mudslide if you want”), which Moss has realised, she gleefully informs us, looks just like those worn by Pan’s People to dance on Top of the Pops. She adds go-go boots inspired by a pair she’s owned for decades. “If I was 25 I’d be side of stage in this!”
It’s not all skimpy. The super has been living in the softly slouchy beige knit, she says, while a pair of gently flared, ’70s-inflected jeans with flattering front pockets instantly conjure another classic Kate look. There’s also a gorgeous, vintage-inspired cream silk suit that’s bound to appeal to cool brides seeking to add a little edge to their big day.
As Gillespie reels off his own influences – the striped long-sleeve tee is an homage to the cover of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s 1973 album Next, he tells me, while the satin shirts are “a bit more Bryan Ferry” – Moss is demonstrating how easily the various pieces can be mixed and matched, slipping on a sheer white boho skirt over the bikini and adding a distressed tee and a low-slung belt. She holds up a pair of mint-green velvet shorts with lace trim: “These with the cashmere jumper when it gets a bit chilly? With the brown boots? Of an afternoon at Glasto? It’s working.” She’d wear the floral-print men’s shirt over the leather bra, cinched with the belt, she says.
The anecdotes are golden: that white skirt is based on a dress Moss spotted on display at a (closed) shop in an airport in Turkey. “I was like, ‘I cannot leave here without that dress!’” The short leopard-print wrap number, meanwhile, references one the model borrowed from her friend Anita Pallenberg. “She was just the ultimate at Glastonbury,” Moss sighs.
Kate was with the late Pallenberg the very first time she made the trip to Worthy Farm in 2000. “David Bowie was playing, it was a beautiful day. I was like, we’ve got to go. We all just piled into the Range Rover.” It was impromptu – so impromptu they didn’t have tickets, and as it turned out, even the country’s preeminent model couldn’t sweet talk her way past security without one. Unlikely salvation arrived in the form of Jools Holland, who spotted Kate and co as he drove up to the site and duly donated some of his wristbands to get them in.
It’s a perfect summer tale, and the collection – along with the epic campaign shot by the super’s friends Mert and Marcus – is imbued with exactly the same spirit. These are clothes made for spontaneous road trips, lost weekends and hitting the road with little more than a minidress, some biker boots and a polaroid camera.
When packing these days, “there is a bit more stuff”, Moss concedes, “but I’m not thinking about a ‘look’. I’ve started travelling with daywear that can go into nightwear that can go into bedtime wear… like, a cami can work with a trouser, and then for lounging, then you can wear it to bed.” Hence the versatility of this new Zara collection: ease is precisely the point. “I just think overly thought-out outfits are a bit… for a festival?” Moss trails off, but her quizzical expression hints at her opinion of the sort of studied peacocking that now floods social media around this time of year. “When I look at Coachella I just think… are they even having fun?”
Kate Moss and Bobby Gillespie’s Zara collection is available in store and online starting June 9.
