In 1990, a teenager from Croydon with slightly crooked teeth and a gap in her smile stood on a cold, grey beach at Camber Sands. She wasn't wearing a stitch of makeup. She was wearing a feathered headdress and, in some shots, absolutely nothing else. That girl was Kate Moss. The woman behind the camera was Corinne Day.
Honestly, it’s hard to overstate how much these two people broke fashion. Before them, the 80s were all about the "Amazonian" supermodel—think Cindy Crawford or Naomi Campbell looking like polished, untouchable statues. Then Corinne comes along, a former model herself who hated the "fake" industry, and finds this scrawny 15-year-old. They weren't just making art; they were basically staging a coup against glamour.
The Face: July 1990 and the "3rd Summer of Love"
Most people think Kate Moss just appeared out of thin air on a Calvin Klein billboard. Not quite. It started with an eight-page spread in The Face called "The 3rd Summer of Love." Corinne Day didn't want a "model." She wanted a person. She saw a Polaroid of Kate at the Storm agency and just knew.
The vibe of that shoot was pure "constructed casual." While it looks like a couple of friends just messing around at the beach, Phil Bicker (the art director) actually sent them back to the coast multiple times until they got that exact feeling of raw, awkward youth. Kate looked like the girls you actually knew in real life—the ones with bags under their eyes and messy hair.
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What People Miss About Those Early Years
You’ve gotta realize that Kate and Corinne were actually friends. Kindred spirits. For three years, they were almost inseparable. Kate even lived in Corinne's Soho flat for a while. Corinne was obsessed with documenting everything—the unwashed dishes, the hangovers, the tiny, cramped reality of being young and broke in London.
But there was a dark side to this "realness." Years later, Kate admitted she used to cry before those topless shoots. She felt pressured. She was a kid, and Corinne was the visionary who wouldn't take no for an answer. That power dynamic is something the fashion world often glosses over when they talk about "the magic of their collaboration."
The 1993 Vogue Scandal: When "Under-Exposure" Went Too Far
If the 1990 shoot made them stars, the June 1993 issue of British Vogue nearly ended them. The editorial was titled "Under-Exposure."
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Imagine opening a luxury fashion magazine and seeing a pale, gaunt Kate Moss in a dingy bedroom, wearing nothing but a pair of saggy H&M knickers and a thin vest. No airbrushing. No expensive lighting. Just a girl who looked, in the words of the New York Times, "very young and very dead."
- The Backlash: People lost their minds. Critics called it "paedophile chic."
- The Politics: Even Bill Clinton eventually weighed in, famously condemning "heroin chic" for making addiction look cool.
- The Fallout: Vogue readers felt betrayed. They wanted aspiration, not a reminder of a seedy London squat.
Corinne defended the shots until the end. She said she was just showing life. She took one of the most famous photos in that set—where Kate is huddled by a radiator—right after Kate had been crying over a fight with her boyfriend. Corinne saw beauty in that vulnerability; the rest of the world saw a scandal.
Why the Friendship Collapsed
Success is a weird thing. After that 1993 Vogue shoot, their paths diverged sharply. Kate Moss became a "chameleon." She learned how to play the game, how to be the high-fashion icon the industry demanded. She grew up.
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Corinne didn't.
She stayed true to her gritty, documentary roots. She kept photographing her friends in uncompromising, often "ugly" ways. The fashion industry, which is notoriously fickle, eventually moved on to the next trend, leaving Corinne feeling disillusioned. They stopped working together for years. It wasn't until Corinne was diagnosed with a brain tumor that the bridge started to be rebuilt. Kate actually helped fundraise for Corinne’s treatment through the "Save the Day" campaign, selling signed prints of those early, iconic photos.
The Legacy of the "Gritty" Lens
Corinne Day died in 2010, but you see her ghost everywhere now. Every time you see a "no-filter" ad campaign or a brand like Glossier celebrating "real skin," that’s Corinne's influence. She paved the way for Juergen Teller and every other photographer who prefers a greasy spoon to a studio.
Actionable Insights for Fashion History Buffs
If you want to actually understand this era beyond the Pinterest boards, here is what you should do:
- Track down a copy of "Diary": This is Corinne’s book published in 2000. It’s not a fashion book. It’s a raw, often painful look at her life, her friends, and her battle with illness. It puts her work with Kate into a much deeper context.
- Look at the Stylists: Don't just credit the photographer. Melanie Ward and Tara St. Hill were the ones finding vintage clothes in charity shops and stripping away the 80s excess. They were the architects of the "grunge" look.
- Compare the 1990 vs. 1993 Shoots: Look at them side-by-side. One is about the joy of youth; the other is about the exhaustion of it. Seeing the shift in Kate’s eyes tells the whole story of the 90s.
The story of Kate Moss and Corinne Day isn't just about pretty pictures. It’s about two women who changed how we define beauty, paid a massive personal price for it, and ultimately realized that "real life" is a lot harder to capture than a magazine cover.