Celebrate Kate

Photos by Jake Chessum

When I photographed Kate Moss in 1990 I never imagined that I’d still be looking at the photographs we took together all these years later. Kate lived in my home town of Croydon in South London. While I was studying at St. Martins School of Art in Covent Garden, I would sometimes bump into her on the train as we both commuted up to London trying to get our careers started. I’d already seen her photo on the “New Faces” wall at her agency Storm, and at various castings as I tried to get a portfolio together. We did a test shoot together while I was still at college.

After I had graduated, I scored my first ever advertising job for Neutrogena. Here I was just a few months out of college shooting a big campaign. To this day I am still not sure why I was trusted with the job, but I am so glad I was. I was paid £1500 for the day. Unheard of money for me: A year earlier I’d been making £3 an hour stuffing envelopes for a temp agency in Croydon.

The casting brief from the agency had been simple: We want somebody relatable, natural and young, with great skin, but definitely not a supermodel. At the casting Kate came in and was all smiles. She recognized me and we greeted each other with a hug and chatted for a few minutes. She had an infectious laugh and a great personality…she was really funny.

After she left literally everybody at the agency who had seen her came over to ask me “How do you know her?” “Who is that girl?”. Everybody was blown away. She really had a special quality even at that early stage. She got the job.

The irony…within about 18 months she was one of the biggest models on the planet.

We shot at The Worx Studios in King’s Cross. I asked Kate to sign a Polaroid of me and her at the shoot, I think because she’d been on the cover of The Face. It was the start of a collection of autographed memorabilia that I still add to whenever I get the chance.

Now everybody’s heard of Kate and these images show her right at the beginning of her career, aged 16, when we both lived at home in with our parents.