Kate Moss Is In Paris – And Dressing Accordingly
In 2008, The Guardian asked “is a beret ever anything other than a deeply annoying piece of headwear?”, citing the “simpering cosiness, the princessy primness” that the chapeau imparts. It’s a question I also levelled at my colleague, Alice, not long ago when she turned up to work wearing one. That is because, despite once being a symbol of resistance, worn by the Scottish Jacobites, the Black Panthers, Basquiat, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, the beret, to modern eyes, is more closely associated with aspirant content creators who post from flower-wall cafés in Montmartre.
And yet Kate Moss – who seems to be on a mission to tick off as many French-girl tropes as possible while in Paris for the spring/summer 2026 collections – gets away with it. The supermodel was yesterday afternoon photographed arriving at The Ritz in a beret and a ribbon-tied polka dot blouse (coucou, Brigitte Bardot!) with wide-legged trousers, leopard-print booties and a Saint Laurent bag slung over the shoulder of a long suede coat. The pièce de résistance was the 6,000-puff vape in her hand… although it might have been more culturally sensitive for that to have been replaced with a string of garlic or a croque monsieur or a pack of good old-fashioned Gauloises.
I suppose the whole Emily in Paris look works on someone like Kate Moss because of the ways in which she complicates the cliché of the overdressed tourist. Everything Emily-types try to signal – the look-at-how-winsome-and-continental-and-insouciant-I-am thing – is something that Moss embodies without effort. “It’s seen as a form of nonchalance, and that freedom of being is what people find attractive,” said model Caroline de Maigret on the truth of French-girl style back in June 2024. “She’s the girl who looks like she’s just rolled out of bed and doesn’t care what people say about her. I identify with that: looking like I’ve spent the least time in front of the mirror when I show up somewhere.”