As years of hard living and bad boyfriends take their toll, is the world's last supermodel in free fall?

See Kate's covers over the past 19 years

On the evening of April 30, a visibly jittery Kate Moss was pacing the floor of Topshop in London's Oxford Circus in a red chiffon gown, looking tiny next to the High Street chain's blustery, big-bellied owner, Sir Philip Green. As the 33-year-old supermodel scanned the racks of one-shouldered dresses, postage-stamp-size denim shorts, and vests—all designed by Moss herself, with an assist by stylist Katie England—Green admitted to a waiting cameraman that, yes, stepping into the spotlight as a designer, rather than as a muse, was a little daunting for Miss Moss.
"In spite of her reservations about becoming too accessible, with the Topshop debut Kate Moss turned a corner, taking the first wobbly steps toward becoming a brand herself--morphing from supermodel to aspiring supermogul."Outside, despite a chill in the spring air, crowds lined the street fronting the store, awaiting the model's debut collection for the retailer and plotting their shopping strategies. Before the doors opened, Moss stepped gingerly up into the store's window, concealed from the public by a gaudy red velvet curtain. At the moment the drapes were pulled back, they revealed the model posing with a pack of plaster mannequins, under a lurid blue neon sign that read, "kate moss [hearts] topshop." Never once cracking a smile, Moss cast her feline gaze upon the gathered masses for a few precious moments. Then the curtain swished shut, bringing the whole spectacle to an abrupt anticlimax. As she slipped back into a VIP area that had been cordoned off in the rear of the store, expectant shoppers emitted a collective sigh of disappointment. Cracked one, in Cockney tones, "You've got to be kidding me."

Shortly after midnight—a time when most supermodels typically begin, rather than end, their evenings—Moss was photographed asleep in the back of her car, slumped down against the seat with her hair matted across her face, as a driver whisked her home from the launch after-party at the Dorchester Hotel. The following day, the Evening Standard wondered, "Is Mannequin Moss Exhausted After 12 Seconds' Work?"

For years Kate Moss had adeptly cultivated an almost mystically detached air, never straying within a mile of the hokey "spokesmodel" territory occupied by so many of her peers. You wouldn't have encountered Moss launching a perfume at the local mall, or seen her doling out one-liners on a reality TV show. Throughout her career, she had self-deprecatingly noted that she was "just a model," but nonetheless flexed her petite muscles in aligning herself with A-list designers and photographers, holding court in the airy reaches of high fashion even when she went mass, as she had in Calvin Klein's 1993 underwear campaign. But in spite of her reservations about becoming too accessible, with the Topshop debut she turned a corner, taking the first wobbly steps toward becoming a brand herself—morphing from supermodel to aspiring supermogul.

As it turned out, Moss had reason to feel nervous that night in April. Although Sir Philip Green claims the company has already recouped Moss's £3 million "design fee" with sales of her rock groupie–inspired line, reactions to the Topshop collaboration were decidedly tepid; some detractors wondered aloud if the model had simply copied pieces she'd dug out of her overstuffed closet. "DupliKate!" blared one headline. The Welsh designer Jeff Banks, a founder of Topshop rival Warehouse, went so far as to publicly question whether Moss had actually designed the collection at all, implying to reporters that she had merely breezed into the Topshop offices for a meeting or two. "Can Moss sharpen a pencil or draw a matchstick man?" he pondered to a reporter. "I wouldn't put money on it." Other fashion critics pronounced the collection "bland," perhaps the worst epithet possible for a woman whose unique sartorial sensibility has kept her atop the world's best-dressed lists for nearly two decades.

Barely two months later, Moss suffered another blow when reports surfaced that her rocker boyfriend of two years, pallid Babyshambles frontman Pete Doherty, had cheated on her, bedding a South African shampoo model named Lindi Hingston one night in June.