raspberry toga and Roman sandals. She's just in from Miami with her baby, eight-month-old Lila, and an entourage of primpers and fixers. Florida has given the globally famous physique a fawny richness and, when she speaks, it's clear she's very, very excited.
"I've just been clinging to David Bowie naked. It doesn't get much better than that," she laughs, the accent modulating between South London checkout girl and nicely enunciated Home Counties chick.
Moss was overwhelmed at the prospect of meeting Bowie. Though she moves in rarefied circles herself, Bowie is a proper icon. She wasn't sure what she'd say. And yet, in terms of image, the British fashion star is heir to Bowie's legacy. In the early '70s Bowie utterly overhauled the way a pop star could look with his malnourished-alien-on-drugs chic. In the '90s Moss re-defined what a model could be: not a bronzed Amazon or big-busted fertility symbol but a vacantly staring, androgynous, druggy-looking street urchin.
So it comes as no shock that Moss is a big Bowie fan. The pair grew up in South London neighbourhoods only a few miles apart. When she was 11 her dad bought her a Bowie poster. She liked the Aladdin Sane look but didn't discover the music until later. When she finally got Life On Mars? she heard the line, "And her mummy is yelling no", along with a reference to, "the girl with the mousey hair", and thought the song was about her. That song, along with Rock & Roll Suicide and Golden Years, became her favourite.
More than any other model, Moss is a confirmed rock chick. Her extra-curricular activities don't include yoga videos or launching a swimwear range. She's sung on Primal Scream's album Evil Heat, appeared in Johnny Cash and Elton John videos, and completed the mandatory spell in The Priory.
But none of this is preparation for talking to Bowie. She's nervous and wants to go over her questions. We walk out of the hotel and down the road away from the lenses of the jockeying paparazzi across the street. They want pictures of Moss and her baby but there will be no preening for the cameras today.
"You've got the shot, now fuck off," she says under her breath.
"I'm a bit fucked," announces Moss as she sweeps into Bowie's Lower Manhattan recording studio the next day. Last night Moss went to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers at Madison Square Garden. She was taking photos of US Marines in crisp white uniforms while support act Queens Of The Stone Age stole hungry sweaty glances at her. Afterwards she partied with the Chili Peppers at the Mercer. Well, she partied, they had a glass of water. For the interview she has gone for a sober business look, above the waistline at least: a nice black jacket. Underneath is a black top which looks like it's been ventilated with garden shears, though with a pleasing symmetry.
Bowie is waiting. He looks like a college kid: new pumps, grey T-shirt and jeans. You examine the vertical lines of the trousers in vain for signs of an arse. On the mixing desk is a picture of his two-year-old daughter, Alexandria (Lexie) Bowie, and another of Little Richard. Bowie sent off for the latter when he was nine. A shilling from an ad in Melody Maker. He put it in a frame from Woolworths and has taken it with him to every recording in the last 10 years. Next door from the studio control room another talisman lurks: veteran Bowie producer Tony Visconti, prepping the mics for today's recording session. Moss tells Bowie that her girl-friends Liv Tyler and Stella McCartney screamed when she told them she was meeting David Bowie. Despite the rock dads, even they were star-struck. Then she set about compiling her questions. She's opted for an interview technique which echoes Bowie's cut-up approach to lyrics in the '70s: individually folded questions placed in a top hat to be picked out at random.
Moss: OK, the first question is... name, in no particular order, five of your favourite songs.
Bowie : Shipbuilding by Robert Wyatt, I guess. Your Feet's Too Big, Fats Waller. Where Were You? by The Mekons. And - this is greedy - the four last songs by Richard Strauss, which have been the soundtrack to my life. The Electrician by Scott Walker. Inch Worm by Danny Kaye [from the musical Hans Christian Andersen]. I was seven or eight when that came out. The chords were some of the first I learned on a guitar. They're remarkable chords, very melancholic. Ashes To Ashes is influenced by that. It's childlike and melancholic in that children's story way. |
