How model Kate Moss became a muse

Among a sea of identically beautiful faces she still stands out from the crowd. She becomes a celebrity in her own right, she doesn't get out of her bed for less than $10,000, she goes by her first name only and she captivates designers, magazine editors and photographers alike. There's Gisele and Naomi, Claudia and Christy, Cindy and Carla. And then there's Kate.

On paper, Kate Moss shouldn't be a supermodel. She's short, at 5'8" and has slightly wonky teeth and a boyish figure, yet at 36, and after more than 20 years in the industry, she is still worshipped by everyone from the top designers to the teens who visit Topshop to buy her fashion line, and above all, by the photographers who queue up to attempt to capture her enigmatic beauty.

Shortly after she was spotted at the age of 14 by Sarah Doukas of Storm, Moss met a rising Peruvian photographer, Mario Testino, backstage at a John Galliano show. They formed a friendship which has spanned two decades during which time they have both achieved worldwide fame. And, of course, she became his muse.

Now a new book, Kate Moss by Mario Testino, celebrates one of the fashion world's most successful and prolific working relationships. His tenth photographic publication to date features shots of the supermodel taken by the photographer – who has snapped everyone from Princess Diana to Lady Gaga – for campaigns and editorials as well as never-before-seen private images. Printed by the fashion world's favourite publisher, Taschen, it is a suitably stylish love letter to the world's most fashionable woman.

In a selection of more than 100 images chosen by Testino, we see Moss looking playful and pensive, moody and melancholy. We see her sitting naked on the toilet, her dress around her ankles. In one shot she crawls along a hotel lobby, cigarette in one hand, lipstick in the other.

In another, she flashes her crotch at the camera. In another she wears a halo of fairy lights, and in yet another she poses in the back of a limousine with fellow supermodel Naomi Campbell.

Moss was still a teenager when she first met Testino. "Shortly after her first Galliano show I went backstage to congratulate her, only to find her crying," he says. "She was disappointed that she had only been given one outfit to model in the show. My answer to her was this: 'In life there are perfumes and colognes. You need to use lots of cologne as the scent fades away; with a perfume you just use a drop and it lasts all night. You are a perfume, you will go on and on.' Little did I know just how true that would become! And that I had made a friend for life."

Testino is one of the most celebrated fashion photographers in the world, and – mirroring artist-muse relationships over the years – just as he played his role in furthering Moss's career, she has done the same for him.

"Mario took me to a new level of glamour," explains Moss in her introduction to the book. "I don't think anybody had seen me as any kind of sexy model before he did. He was the one that transformed me. Before him I was just a grungy girl, but he saw me differently. He was the first to say 'Oh, she's quite sexy. I've seen her out! I know she's not just that grungy girl.' He'd seen me in a pair of heels, getting glamorous – and he was the first to start taking pictures of me in that way. He changed the way people thought about me as a model, for sure. Later other people started working with me in that way, but he was the first." Moss concludes: "He has passion and energy and vibrancy and all those things that make a person a superstar, really."

Testino has said that Moss likes working with him because, "When I am there, I don't judge," while Madonna, another regular subject of his, says: "He is a scream. He's so much fun. He's the kind of guy who will photograph you, and if he doesn't like the way you're standing or something, he'll kick you. And he's constantly singing and moving around the room and he's so full of life, and I feel like his photographs are, too."

Testino saw in Kate Moss back then what the rest of the world sees today: an icon. British Vogue editor Alexandra Schulman bans the overused word from her publication, with one exception: when it is used in reference to Kate Moss. Over the years many people have tried to describe what it is about Moss that makes her fashion's most famous and most enduring supermodel.

Fellow model Christy Turlington has described how "she was always funnier than everyone else, and savvy. What has kept her going all this time is the fact that nothing takes her over; it's she who takes over."

Her former boyfriend, actor Johnny Depp, said simply that she made him laugh and that "Man, you can't beat that South London accent." Marc Jacobs, the world's biggest fashion designer, has said of her: "Kate is a muse to a generation … she defines a time, a feeling, that has become part of history".

She lives by the motto "Never explain, never complain, never apologise" and as such doesn't talk to the press. The public have rarely heard that famous South London accent. We don't know what she made of her relationship with famous waster Pete Doherty, nor how she felt about being photographed allegedly snorting cocaine through a rolled-up five pound note. The no-comment tactic has made her a superstar. She may be ubiquitous, but without a voice she's enigmatic. We do know that in addition to her perceived physical flaws, there are a few emotional ones too. She is drawn to dangerous men. She has spent time in rehab.

And yet for all the damage she inflicts on her own body (her lifestyle is a world away from the yoga and macrobiotic diets of other models now in their thirties) it doesn't seem to show. Indeed, in a dusty attic in Vogue HQ there surely hangs some fading Testino print of the model, showing the true effects of 20 years of hard partying.

Testino acknowledges the model's wild ways. "She lives life to the full," he says. "When you are with her, you get to see more of everything. She isn't like anyone else. Every time you photograph Kate you feel you are seeing a girl in real life, not a model."

As much as he might like to keep her all to himself however, Testino has to share Kate Moss around. She is his favourite muse, and he is her favourite photographer, however, she serves as an inspiration to a number of other important photographers, and even artists.

She was included in a recent exhibition by the prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York entitled "The Model as Muse". A painting by Lucian Freud of her naked and pregnant sold at auction for nearly 4 million in 2005, while British artist Marc Quinn immortalised her in 50kg of solid gold. The life-sized piece, Siren, is worth 1.5 million in gold alone and is the biggest such statue since the days of ancient Egypt.

"This sculpture", said Quinn at the time of unveiling, "is about the abstractions that rule our lives, the desire for money, immortality, for beauty. Kate Moss is a cultural hallucination we have all agreed to create. She is the only person who has the ubiquity and silence that is required in an image of divinity, that has been created through time, so that we can project onto it."

The photographer Corrine Day shot Moss at 16 in an iconic cover for The Face, while street artist Banksy created an image of her inspired by Andy Warhol's famous Marilyn Monroe series.

Scottish photographer Rankin has said: "Being able to work with Kate is the pinnacle of any photographer's career. Kate is just incredible. There is no one like her. When she's in front of the camera, she's different every time, like she's taking on a different character. In a way, she is the original model. She pushed the boundaries. People try to be like her but they never quite get there. That's why she is still at the top of her game."

Alex Katz, Stella Vine and Gary Hume have painted her. Chuck Close has photographed her. But no one has turned their lens on her as often as Mario Testino.

Testino is by no means the first photographer to become enamoured by a model muse, although his relationship with Moss is the exception in that it is a friendship, not a love affair.

Rankin is famed for regularly photographing his model wife Tuuli Shipster, and published Heidilicious last year, a book devoted to the model Heidi Klum. Then there's Norman Parkinson and Wenda Rogerson, and of course David Bailey – who claims to have slept with around 350 of the models he photographed – including his famous model girlfriends Penelope Tree and Jane Shrimpton.

Unlike the rest however, there is something about the platonic relationship between Moss and Testino which comes through in his pictures of her. She trusts him implicitly. He looks at her as a photographer and friend, not as a lover. We know that, unlike Bailey and his flings, their relationship will continue, that she is, and forever will be his, and indeed the world's, favourite muse.

Kate Moss by Mario Testino is published by Taschen at 300. Each one of the limited run of 1,500 copies is signed by Testino, www.taschen.com

This article was first published in The Scotsman on Saturday, August 28