In 1993, a 19-year-old Kate Moss wore a slip dress to an evening event–which is generally something that lots of young women were doing in the early ’90s–that accidentally laid bare the model’s slight, elfin proportions and an indiscreet thong. Cut from copper-coated nylon, the Liza Bruce creation turned almost-nude beneath the flash of a camera bulb and pictures of Moss–beaming and blithely unaware with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other–were splashed across the next day’s front pages.
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“It was the first time I really got papped,” the supermodel said back in 2019. “I had no idea why everyone was so excited–in the darkness of Corinne’s Soho flat the dress was not see-through!” With a permanent residence in the V&A museum, that dress has since become one of the most referenced looks of the decade, and it could now be yours for just $250. (Well…almost.) An exact replica of Liza Bruce’s spring 1994 slip will be listed as part of Kerry Taylor Auctions’s spring 2024 catalogue–which also includes the Judy Blame-designed “God Save America” T-shirt that Moss wore to cover i-D magazine in 2004, Tom Ford-era Saint Laurent pieces and reams of archival Gianni Versace.
The auction house teased its April 14 sale on Instagram yesterday afternoon, detailing that it had acquired Moss’s original naked dress from an erstwhile employee of Bruce. “Would sell my soul for this,” Camille Charrière commented, while the fashion journalist Dal Chodha left an emphatic “OMG.” It’s all part of the lore and legend that collects around Moss–so much so, in fact, that her daughter Lila commissioned Nensi Dojaka to create a facsimile of Bruce’s design for the 2023 Fashion Awards, complete with a dental floss thong. “Had I known we would be talking about it 30 years later…,” Kate Moss said during her Life In Looks video last year.