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Intoxicated by hotpants

This article is more than 16 years old
Hadley Freeman
Excitement about the new Kate Moss collection proves the depth of desire for a style paragon

As most of you probably already know, next week Kate Moss's collection for Topshop arrives in stores. How could you not? The advent of these clothes has been treated for the last few months by the fashion press with an excitement best described as nigh religious. Soon we will be able to buy a pair of hotpants to which Moss herself has given her seal of approval! Oh Lord, you are merciful to us poor lambs!

Leaving aside the debate regarding the merits of clothes designed by someone with absolutely no fashion training - what with Madonna knocking out tracksuits for H&M and Lily Allen signed up to New Look - the concept of being taught how to cut clothes before flogging them in stores seems as sweetly anachronistic as having etiquette lessons before being allowed to eat in public.

And the wisdom of getting a model to design clothes seems dubious. A model's job is to make bad clothes look good. They are there to convince consumers that they, too, will accrue the perfect hair, teeth, smile, body and skin of the model if they wear that weird fringed suede minidress by Prada. Moss is the most successful model in the world because she is better at this than anyone. Personally, I've always found the concept of models odd: you have to question the merits of, say, a handbag that needs to be held by a £10,000-a-day model to look good. And what's the big deal about a dress that makes Linda Evangelista look like Linda Evangelista? I'd be much more impressed with a dress that had that effect on Ann Widdecombe. So whether having a model design clothes is a wheeze that will benefit consumers remains to be seen.

This is particularly true in the case of Moss's collection for Topshop. As with Madonna and Lily Allen's high street collections, the clothes are almost entirely based on items from her own wardrobe. The carefully leaked photos of pieces from the collection in fashion magazines, as modelled by Moss, include dresses with hems so high that the world, to quote Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous, becomes your gynecologist, and hotpants so short they are more accurately described by the former half of that word than the latter. All may look perfectly nice on Moss, but others might find them, to use the fashion magazine euphemism, "a bit tricky". There are one or two more practical pieces - a kneelength floral dress here, a ribbed vest top there - but these are inevitably overshadowed by, say, the minidress apparently made out of plastic discs.

No doubt this collection will bring out crowds that will spark many a comparison of questionable taste to starving Russians stampeding for bread. Because for all the concern about how models make women feel dissatisfied with their own appearance, Moss's success in convincing women to wear what she wears says quite a lot for women's self-esteem.

Let's see, there have been skinny jeans, brass-button waistcoats, flat moccasin boots - the list of trends started by Moss is not edifying. And yet millions of women in this country look at photos of her in all of the above and, far from slinking away into a corner, apparently think they would look just as good in a pair of high-cut denim hotpants, and spend their money accordingly.

The adulation of Moss by the media and young women is extraordinary, particularly considering her current situation, trailing around after her drippy junkie boyfriend. Yet the continuing fascination with her, coupled with the excitement about her collection, proves the public's desire to believe there is someone who will show them how to live a better, cooler, more stylish life, even if ultimately it results in queueing for two hours for a pair of hotpants.

· Hadley Freeman is the Guardian's deputy fashion editor

hadley.freeman@theguardian.com

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