HARRY BENSON Our photographer captures Kate Moss backstage in 1993

WHAT IS THERE TO say about Kate Moss that hasn’t already been said? She is a supermodel nonpareil. One sentence says it all.

Stories of Kate being ‘accidentally’ discovered in 1988 at age 14 at JFK airport by Sarah Doukas, founder of Storm Management, echo the stories of Lana Turner being serendipitously discovered in 1937 at age 15 sipping a soda at the Top Hat Malt Shop in Hollywood (that she was at Schwab’s Drugstore is sadly fiction). Yet, both are the stories that dreams are made of.

When I photographed Kate Moss in Paris in the fall of 1993, she was there for some of her favorite designers, including John Galliano who was presenting his Spring 1994 Prêt-à-Porter collection. This was well before his drunken disasterous outburst in 2010 that cost him his job as creative director/designer for Dior. Galliano’s exile ended in 2014 with the help of Anna Wintour when he became the designer for Mason Margiela.

Kate Moss knew I was photographing her backstage that evening, and she stood very still as I approached. Never trying to hide from photographers, she seemed to quite casually take it for granted that she was a star, yet she was not haughty or pretentious in any way.

The supermodel is still going strong at the age of 48. Let’s hope she continues modeling into her 80s like the fabulous Carmen. For Kate is one of the few who stops the viewer from turning the page or clicking another image on the computer, which is the ultimate goal of every photographer, designer, and magazine editor that I have ever known. u

Kate Moss backstage at John Galliano’s Spring 1994 prêt-à-porter presentation in Paris, October 1993.