There were also, notably, 14 fashion collections with Topshop. Yes, there have been collaborations – countless collaborations – over the years, from jewellery with Messika to perfumes with Coty and cans with Diet Coke. “I don’t really want to just turn up and be the face of. The reason we are sitting here today is the culmination of several decisions in recent years: 35 years after signing with Storm, and becoming the face of impossible-to-number international campaigns for fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands – from Chanel and Louis Vuitton to Rimmel London and Kérastase – it simmers down to one thing: “I want to be in control,” she says. Moss’s home in the Cotswolds © Sascha von Bismarck “Snoring dog!” Indeed, it provides the soundtrack to our conversation. “That’ll be on the tape, won’t it?” she says. Moss, dressed in a knitted nutmeg top, jeans and Blundstone boots, laughs – a magnificent pub landlady cackle: warm, unfiltered and infectious. Archie the dog tries to eat my brownie, then settles down and starts snoring.

Moss’s boyfriend of almost eight years, Nikolai von Bismarck, and his brother Sascha, who has taken today’s photographs, politely traipse through the room, moving kit about.

The sitting room of Moss’s home is elegantly lived-in far from a show home with chopped cushions and artfully placed objets, it is dotted with personal knick-knacks, mystical trinkets, half-burned candles, books and plenty to engage the eye: an oval fuchsia Damien Hirst painting dotted with butterflies hangs opposite me, the vintage fireplace is a rich, mottled marble, and the window opposite frames a tree outside whose branches Moss has tied with brightly coloured ribbons. Moss wears vintage blazer, Paige jeans and Amy Russell Taylor x Cosmoss necklace © Sascha von BismarckĪnd yet, here we are. “A new auction market within fashion photography has been created.” I also remember wondering, “Which of these artworks is most like you?” As Moss’s motto was famously said to be “never complain, never explain”, I seemed destined never to discover. As Alexander Montague-Sparey, then Christie’s head of photographs, noted at the time, the evening changed the art landscape: “We are seeing fashion photographers recognised and celebrated as artists,” he said. Artists included Allen Jones, Peter Blake, Jake & Dinos Chapman and a stellar roster of fashion photographers: Nick Knight, Mario Testino, David Sims, Tim Walker and Herb Ritts to name a few. The pieces were an homage to Moss as muse and a testimony to her chameleon-like, global success since she was “spotted” in 1988, aged 14, at JFK airport by Sarah Doukas of Storm Model Management. We were at a private view at Christie’s auction house for an exhibition of 59 works of the supermodel. I was first in the immediate orbit of Moss 10 years ago.

Rewilding knepp book