How Kate Moss masterminded daughter Lila Grace's rise to fashion stardom

Most 18 year olds would shudder in horror if you told them they dressed like their mothers. But then again, the vast majority of school-leavers aren’t the progeny of one of Britain's most famous supermodels and a top style icon of the last three decades.

On Tuesday, Lila Grace Moss Hack, the daughter of Kate Moss and Dazed & Confused founder Jefferson Hack, opened and closed the Miu Miu show. It was her runway debut, but Kate’s expert hand has been there for the last four years, ensuring her daughter glides into the industry in the smoothest way possible.

Together, they posed for Lila’s first magazine cover in 2016 when Mario Sorrenti photographed the pair for Vogue Italy. Lila was just 14, but with her mother on set the shoot would have been in stark contrast to Kate’s first jobs when – at the age of 15 – she was regularly expected to take her top off in front of hundreds of strangers, and has subsequently spoken about how traumatic she found the experience.

Lila, by contrast, has had not one but two of fashion’s most powerful people protecting and helping her. Her model agency of choice was the Kate Moss Agency (no surprises there) and soon after she signed with them, she booked the front cover of her father’s magazine, Dazed & Confused.

Best friends with Stella Jones – the daughter of The Clash musician Mick Jones and film producer Miranda Davis – the then 14-year-olds were soon sitting at the front row of London Fashion Week next to Edward Enninful; Lila still had braces when she and Jones booked their first ad campaign for Braid Bar.

Wary after her early exposure to the industry, Kate wouldn’t let her daughter take on a serious fashion job until she turned 16. But just days after her birthday in 2018, Marc Jacobs announced that Lila would be the face of his upcoming beauty campaign. Jacobs is a long-time friend of Kate’s and said in an interview with W Magazine that, “Kate wasn’t allowing Lila to do just anything in the same way that Cindy [Crawford] wasn’t allowing Kaia [Gerber] to do just anything. I have a history with these women and with their families.”

As well as shaping her career, Kate has – like so many mothers – given her daughter advice on what to wear. But instead of nudging her in the direction of sensible skirts and nice jumpers, Kate has, in true supermodel style, urged her daughter to take various fashion risks along the way.

Who could forget the famously sheer silver dress Kate wore to a model agency party with just a pair of black pants in 1993? The supermodel has subsequently said that the slip was far less see-through in real life and that only the camera flashes made it look like she was nearly naked. But the photographs were an instant global hit, printed in magazines and newspapers around the world, and they quickly turned the already very successful model into a superstar.

Thanks to her upbringing, Lila is a lot less naive about photographers, but when she wore a see-through black slip dress to Kim Jones’s birthday party at the Laylow – with a bandage bra unlike Kate – it was undoubtedly a tribute to the ultimate influencer, aka her mum.

Over the years Lila has covered a number of her mother’s greatest hits, but always with a Gen Z spin on things. So where Kate pairs her ubiquitous skinny jeans with ballet flats and leather jackets, Lila has replaced skinnies with flares and wears them with bomber jackets instead.

When Kate put on a shimmering gold dress for her book launch party in 2012, she opted for a pavement skimming style, and carried a gold-chain Chanel handbag. Lila’s dress for Marc Jacob’s wedding was - befitting her age - a mid-thigh mini with a chunky bow on the waistband, but in her hand she carried (you guessed it) a black Chanel bag.

Now Lila is 18 (her birthday was at the end of September), she is old enough to finally forge her own path. Notably Miu Miu isn’t a brand that Kate has any particularly strong connections with – Kate has of course worked with Miuccia Prada before, but she isn't in the supermodel’s inner circle.

And while her mother was no doubt watching with pride from her London house, walking down that catwalk felt like Lila’s first foray into an independent career. Just one where you sometimes get to go home and share a wardrobe with the world’s most fashionable woman.

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