It remains the rudest encounter I’ve ever had with a celebrity. Five months on and the thought of it still sends a sharp twinge down my spine.
At a London Fashion Week party last September, the cocktails were flowing and guests were in convivial mood. Lottie Moss had been invited – and probably paid – by a women’s online fashion brand to come down to the event at a church in West London – and she was enjoying being the focus of attention.
I introduced myself to the ex-OnlyFans model to praise her for having warned her fans about the potential dangers of the weight-loss jab, Ozempic. I also wanted to suggest we meet up because Lottie could be of interest to the Mail and MailOnline’s younger readers.
But when I did so, I was met with a scathingly rude rebuke as she looked my friend and me up and down and demanded: ‘Who even are you?’
Lottie left me in no doubt that she was enraged by my very presence, and then she launched into a rant about how horrid newspapers had been to her, and asked why I would ever choose to be a journalist.
I’ve got a thick skin – and I don’t hold it against her.
Model and reality star Lottie Moss, 27, is the younger sister of Kate Moss
It has certainly not been an easy ride for Lottie, 27. Her struggles as the younger half-sister of Kate Moss, perhaps the most famous model the world has ever seen, have been extensively documented. Lottie has often spoken of feeling in the shadow of Kate, 51, and cited their troubled relationship as a contributory factor in her decline into alcohol and drug addiction for which she went to rehab in 2022.
Viewers of Netflix’s Celebrity Bear Hunt, released today, will be dearly hoping she has now finally turned a corner in her battle with substance abuse.
The show hosted by Holly Willoughby sees 12 ‘celebrity bears’ hunted down in the Costa Rican jungle by survival expert Bear Grylls, with the last to be caught crowned as the winner. Her competitors include designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, former tennis star Boris Becker and ex-Spice Girl Mel B.
And, judging by Tuesday’s press junket for Bear Hunt, at the super posh five-star Raffles hotel in central London, where she strutted around in little more than a white corset and tights, Lottie is feeling positive about the future.
Even so, it’s rather a far cry from the promise of her early career, during which she modelled for Calvin Klein and appeared on the cover of Vogue while still a teenager. At the time, some in the fashion world hailed her – no doubt too hastily – as the next Kate Moss.
Kate and Lottie attend a Topshop show at autumn/winter London fashion week 2014
So where did it all go wrong for Lottie – and has she finally turned things around?
Born Charlotte Moss in 1998 to travel agent Peter Moss and his Norwegian second wife, Inger Solnordal, she was raised in the town of Haywards Heath in West Sussex.
During what Lottie says was a humble upbringing, her older half-sister Kate (they share the same father) was already internationally famous.
‘I had a very chilled childhood,’ Lottie told Abbey Clancy’s Exhibit A podcast recently.
‘My parents had a cutesy small house, and I would walk to school. When I saw how glamorous [Kate’s] job was, I decided I wanted to do it.’
‘Everyone I knew, knew who she was. I used to get teased because she was in Playboy. Boys would tell me they had seen my sister’s boobs.’
Lottie was first scouted after she was a 13-year-old bridesmaid at Kate’s wedding to musician Jamie Hince in 2011. By January 2014, Lottie had signed with Storm Models, the agency that had discovered her older sister in 1988, at the age of just 14, at New York’s JFK airport.
At Topshop’s London Fashion week event in February 2014, Lottie, who had just turned 16, sat in a star-studded front row alongside Kate, Vogue supremo Anna Wintour, models Kendall Jenner and Poppy Delevingne and Topshop boss Philip Green. The collections Kate designed for the high street giant had been wildly successful.
Lottie went on to shoot campaigns for the likes of Calvin Klein and Dolce & Gabbana, after which she moved her studies to a local private school.
Lottie has revealed in recent years that executives in the modelling industry plied her with drugs and alcohol as she was still a teenager
At only 17, she reached a height that many models never do, appearing in Vogue with Kylie Jenner and Bella Hadid for the January 2016 edition. And just a few months later she starred on the cover of May’s Vogue Paris alongside model Lucky Blue Smith.
But then things took a turn for the worse.
Lottie has revealed in recent years that executives in the modelling industry plied her with drugs and alcohol when she was still a teenager.
She told the Head Strong podcast in 2023: ‘When you have people around you who are enabling you, I am talking at high fashion events and people in a penthouse suite, and it’s people that are working for a brand that is very well-known and they’re sat there doing drugs with you as a 19-year-old.’
During the pandemic in 2021, while living in her older sister’s ten-bedroom Gloucestershire mansion, Lottie launched her account on OnlyFans and began to post X-rated snaps and videos for online subscribers.
The content saw her pose fully nude, but her new career came at a cost. By 2022 Lottie had been admitted into rehab for substance abuse issues.
That same year, it was revealed the Storm modelling agency had deleted Lottie from its website, prompting speculation that they had axed the troubled star over her wild lifestyle, cocaine addiction and cosmetic surgery.
After ending her OnlyFans career, Lottie has set her sights on turning her weekly podcast into an ’empire’, and even hopes to host the Oscars one day
After her stint in rehab, Lottie got a face tattoo on her cheek which read ‘lover’. She told Glamour magazine: ‘Yes, it was impulsive, but after years of being so controlled, it was my way of expressing that I am free. I’m no longer controlled.’
And despite calling her half-sister ‘great’ just months earlier, Lottie finished the year with an Instagram post that appeared to express the opposite.
She wrote: ‘I understand I have come from a very privileged position [of] being the sister of someone very famous, but believe it or not that person never really supported me.’
In 2023, she spoke of feeling ‘quite abandoned by my sister’ and said she was reluctant to show ‘the real Lottie’.
Yet last autumn the sisters seemed at last to have mended fences, as they reunited to celebrate their dad’s 80th birthday. Lottie posted a series of snaps alongside Kate, their brother Nick Moss and Kate’s daughter Lila.
August 2024 had seen Lottie launch her own podcast, Dream On. Its weekly episodes promised ‘unfiltered conversations’ with her friends and ‘pop culture icons’.
Since then, she has made headlines by admitting to a drink and drugs problem and revealing she took weight loss jab Ozempic illegally which resulted in her having a seizure and being rushed to hospital last year.
In October, Lottie gave up her OnlyFans account and admitted she wanted to focus on her podcast and television career.
As for what’s to come after the jungles of Costa Rica, Lottie said on her podcast last week that her sights are set on creating an ’empire’ while also finding the right man.
‘In five years’ time I see myself with a ring on my finger, babies and having bought a house.
‘I would love the podcast to be turned into a chat show with huge guests,’ she said.
‘I want it to be an empire. I want to make it to Hollywood, I would love to do more television.
And Lottie says she has an even loftier goal: ‘I want to host the Oscars.’
An admirable ambition, without a doubt. But for the moment at least, the nearest that Lottie is likely to get to the biggest show in Hollywood is as her sister’s plus one – if she can manage to stay in her good books.
