Out Of Fashion

‘SO efficient are the Germans that last Monday’s news about how their country’s General Election was all set to finish in a dead heat, a perfect split down the middle between left and right, surprised only the Times.

On Monday, the paper led with headline news of “Election setback for Germany’s Thatcher brings chaos to Berlin”. The votes were being counted, and the result looked like being very close.

But so much for that. We were more interested in this German iron lady. As was the Telegraph, which told us that this blonde Brunhilde is called Angela Merkel.

The full results of the election were not yet known (she came out narrowly ahead), and the signs on Monday were that Frau Thatcher’s Christian Democrats were winning, just in front of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s Social Democrats.

A line was being drawn down the centre of German politics. And it was just about the only line that had nothing to do with Kate Moss.

Cocaine white remained this season’s black as the Sun brought more news of Kate Moss’s high life. We learnt how she’d dumped her “junkie” lover Peter Doherty.

He responded by letting his creative juices run wild – and proceeded to cover them in all manner of “coke, dope and liquid E…washed down with rum, gin and beer”, as the Sun reported.

Doherty then “threatened to carve up a terrified Sun reporter with a broken bottle”, “partied until 9am with groupies” and “hurled” bottles against a wall and into the swimming pool at his “posh” villa.

But while Doherty’s career played on loop, the Mail focused on “Cocaine Kate” and saw “the pressure grow on fashion chains to drop [the] model”.

But the “Model takes drugs!” shocker took a breather on Tuesday, and we were offered a different vision of the fashion scene. Our minds raced with nightmarish images as the Star told us that Cherie Blair likes to wear vibrating pants.

This is not as a rule, but when occasion permits. And, no, since you ask, these electronic pants were not chosen for her by her style guru Carole Caplin, but serve to keep the Blair thighs in shape.

By Wednesday, we were ready to shout, “Come back, Kate, all is forgiven”. Only, of course, it was not. Moss, now forever known as ‘cocaine Kate’, is no mere clotheshorse, a mobile mannequin hewn from flesh and bone – she’s a role model.

What she wears, the yoof want to wear. What she smokes, the yoof want to smoke. If she sticks cocaine up her hooter, every teenager able to break into their middle-class parents’ “secret stash drawer” will take cocaine.

And so it was that the great, good and clean of the fashion world began to turn their backs on Moss. The model was out of fashion.

As the Sun’s front page said, Moss had been dumped as the face of fashion label H&M. The Mirror confirmed this news, saying that its pictures of the model snorting cocaine were too much for the retailer, which acted after an “outcry from its teenage customers and their horrified parents”.

It’s hard not to sympathise with the parents and guardians of impressionable teenagers, worried that their children will ape the behaviour of an icon like Moss. But such is the way of fashion that while Moss models the genuine article, the youth often have to make do with fakes and imitation. For real fur, read fake fur. For cocaine, read talcum powder and dandruff.

Later in the week, Moss’s contracts with Burberry and Chanel were town up like so much cigarette paper and cast aside.

And there was more. The Mail said that Scotland Yard’s finest were taking a breather from chasing terrorists and armed robbers and planning to interview Moss about her alleged cocaine binge.

No less a person than Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, head of the Yard’s Specialist Crime Directorate, had ordered that his officers question Moss when she returned from New York.

No wonder Moss was sorry. And she was sorry. She most likely still is sorry. The Mirror had heard her say sorry and had published her apology to the nation on Friday’s front page.

The Express was watching alleged London bomber Hussain Osman leave Rome to face charges of conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder and explosive offences, and pleading his innocence – he told his Italian lawyer, Antonietta Sonnessa, it was all a “demonstrative gesture”.

The Sun was talking to Samantha Lewthwaite, wife of Jermaine Lindsay, whose demonstrative gesture on July 7 killed 26 people on a Piccadilly Line Tube train.

And the fearless Mirror was leading with the vital news of Moss’s apology.

“I take full responsibility for my actions,” began Kate. “I want to apologise to all of the people I have let down…I am trying to be positive…”

That’s that, then. Moss took “full responsibility”. She made no excuses. No-one forced her to take drugs. She blamed no-one she met in a mosque. The matter can rest here.

The nation’s morals have been damaged – but they are not beyond repair.

This is the time to heal. But if you’re still worried about things, if Moss has caused you to fret, you had best pop along to your doctor and he’ll be only too happy to give you something to chase way this season’s blues…’

Posted: 26th, September 2005 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink