Kate Moss has revealed how a photoshoot she did as a teenager gave her the ability to “tell a wrong’un a mile away” after a male photographer asked her to pose topless.

Speaking during an appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Moss said the photographer asked her to take her top and bra off during a catalogue shoot. She was 15 years old at the time. 

“He said, ‘Take your top off”,” Moss told the show’s host Lauren Laverne. “I took my top off, and I was really shy then about my body. And he said, ‘Take your bra off’, and I could feel there was something wrong, so I got my stuff and I ran away. I think it sharpened my instincts.” 

After being scouted in her early teenage years, Moss became famous after appearing on the cover of The Face magazine in 1990, just two years later. However, while the cover was responsible for catapulting the young model – who was just 16 at the time – into the limelight, Moss said shooting the cover with the late photographer Corinne Day was a difficult experience.

“I cried a lot,” she explained. “I didn’t want to take my top off. I was really, really self-conscious about my body, and [Day] would say, ‘If you don’t take your top off I’m not going to book you for Elle’, and I would cry.

“It is painful because she was my best friend and I really loved her – but she was a very tricky person to work with. But you know, the pictures are amazing so she got what she wanted and I suffered for them, but in the end they did me a world of good. They did change my career.” 

Moss also reflected on what it was like to shoot her first major advertising campaign for Calvin Klein alongside the Hollywood star Mark Whalberg. Revealing that she took Valium before she went to set to ease her nerves about going topless, Moss said the experience left her feeling “vulnerable and scared”.

Asked if she felt objectified, Moss added: “Completely… I think they played on my vulnerability. I was young and innocent.”

While Moss’ experiences are far from isolated, it’s still horrific to hear about the objectification she and other young models were faced with during the early stages of their careers. 

However, Moss is taking steps to ensure her experiences are not repeated – both through the advice she gives her daughter, 19-year-old Lila, and the way she runs her modelling agency, which she set up in 2016.

“I’ve said to [Lila], you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. If you don’t want to do this shoot, if you don’t feel comfortable, if you don’t want to model, don’t do it.”

“I take care of my models. I make sure that they are with agents at shoots so when they are being taken advantage of, there’s somebody there to say, ‘I don’t think that’s appropriate.’ I don’t know if that’s across the board, but absolutely, that’s what I can do.” 

Images: Getty