Kate's Calvin Klein Heartbreak

The story behind how the Kate Moss Calvin Klein Obsession campaign - her first major international moment - came about is legend: Klein himself recognised that photographer Mario Sorrenti, Moss's then-boyfriend, was "obsessed" with her from the intimate pictures that filled his book and enlisted him to capture her on a holiday that the company arranged. The model's perspective of the shoot that ensued, however, has never been revealed - until now.

"Calvin was clever, he saw from the pictures that it was obsession, and it really was an obsession," she told Nick Knight, for ShowStudio's Subjective series. "I'd wake up in the morning and he'd be taking pictures of me. I was like, 'Fuck off!' I lay like that [naked on a couch] for 10 days. He would not stop taking pictures of that. But, he's Italian, you know? He was like, 'Lay down, I'll tell you when we've got it!' We probably had it in the first roll. They rented us a house, just me and him and loads of film, in this deserted little shack on the beach."

Far from being an idyllic escape, the shoot drove the couple to breaking point, and the relationship never recovered. "I was so… we split up after that," she revealed. "When you're in a relationship with a photographer and they start abusing that relationship - and being like, 'I want you to do this, and I want you to do that' - it makes you go, 'No'. I didn't want to work all the time, but he'd be like, 'Get up on the roof, take your clothes off,' and I would think, 'Fuck off!' Now I understand that kind of thing a bit better, capturing an image, but at the time I was 17."

Speaking of the international attention that followed, Moss revealed that her life changed - and not initially for the better - but soon, she built a support network to help her cope.

1993 - In one of her most famous outfits - at an Elite Models party with Naomi Campbell at the Hilton hotel in London - the physical differences between waifish Kate’s petite frame and that of the Amazonian Campbell were very apparent. At the time, Moss was sharing a flat with Corrine Day and stylist Melanie Ward and wore a suggestively sheer dress by Liza Bruce that Day had asked Bruce to make for a shoot with Linda Evangelista.

"I worked with Herb Ritts on the Marky Mark shoot, and then Steven Meisel, and then they'd start sending limos for me, and I was like, 'That is so embarrassing. I'm not getting in a stretch limo by myself to go to a shoot.' That whole New York thing of, 'You are fabulous! Turn up to a Meisel shoot in a limo and you're fabulous!' I was wearing trainers and a ripped Margiela skirt, total grunge. I didn't feel right at all. But then I made friends: Naomi and Christy took me under their wing, and then I met Johnny, and then I didn't feel like, 'I'm sitting on my own in a big stretch limo,' because they all had stretch limos!"

When Knight suggests that no one - apart from perhaps Marilyn Monroe or Jackie Kennedy - has occupied the same volume of headlines or visual space, Moss responds with signature wit: "Of course there has. Kerry Katona. Or Katie Price. I never think: 'I'm in the papers all the time, because there are loads of people who are in the papers all the time."