As featured in The Untitled Magazine’s REBEL ISSUE:
“There was this one article that was written about me. It was a woman that wrote it, and she said ‘Lottie Moss Hits Rock Bottom.’ I remember it so clearly, her really just talking shit about me.” For those only somewhat familiar with Lottie Moss, the headline might seem rather harsh. The half-sister of Kate Moss has worked for the likes of fashion giants Chanel and Calvin Klein on global campaigns, graced the covers of Vogue and Dazed multiple times before she hit 20, and had been set up as a rising titan of the modeling industry since childhood.
Lottie was at the top of the modeling game throughout her adolescence, and to this day is still the bombshell we know her to be, so it is baffling to think of just what she could have possibly done to spur such a critical review. Sitting with Lottie on Zoom at the Moss family home in the English countryside, following her cover shoot by renowned Duran Duran keyboardist and photographer Nick Rhodes, she vividly recounts her journey to that so-called “rock bottom” to our editor-in-chief Indira Cesarine.
Lottie is the first to admit that she’s had incredible opportunities literally handed to her, yet those opportunities weren’t necessarily always the right path for her as a person, for her mental health, or her confidence as a young girl. “As a young person in the time of your life where you’re meant to be finding yourself and figuring out who you are, I was told who I was meant to be.” In truth, because of her supermodel sister Kate, Lottie felt modeling was a career path chosen for her, thrust upon her by her peers without even considering the possibility that it was not for her. She never even considered a modeling path as a child.
Despite reservations, at her impressionable young age, Lottie went along with it: “I think for anyone that young, it’s always really exciting to be given an opportunity to do something like modeling. And I kind of got sold on it in the same way that most models get sold on it: ‘It’s gonna be so fun. You’re gonna go on with these shoots. And you’re gonna go to all these events.’” Having scored her first modeling contract at 13 years old, when she was scouted at her sister’s wedding, Lottie recalls, in a matter-of-fact tone, the true intent of the agency and the extreme identity crisis she faced as a result: “They really wanted Kate Moss part two, basically.”
But it did not take long for the dark side of the industry, at the time too obscured for a young Lottie to truly understand, to begin to take its toll. First, the anxiety set in, as Lottie uncomfortably reminisced. “I had imposter syndrome because none of the clothes really fit me; I’m 5’5, so the proportions are all wrong. And all of the clothes are sample size. You can imagine that all the sample sizes were for girls that are 5’10/11, who were really stick thin. There’s nothing wrong with being stick thin, but it just wasn’t me… I’ve always been curvy and I’ve always had a really big bum and big boob kind of vibe – I got my boobs done when I was 19 – I just liked looking like that, and it just didn’t fit the modeling side of things.” On top of that, the constant claims that “she doesn’t deserve it, she’s only here because of Kate,” wore her down immensely, and made her feel like she truly didn’t belong. “I think they really struggled to put me in a box, because they didn’t know where to put me… my agency could have probably gotten way better use of me in a different genre than high fashion.”
Lottie’s modeling agency placed expectations on her that even impacted her personal life. Now able to laugh about the past, Lottie can’t help but share some of the absurd details of their demands. “My first boyfriend I had when I was 18, they told me off for being with him. They said ‘You should probably break up with him, it’s not a good look.’ As an 18 year old, getting told, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that’ – I wasn’t allowed to really do anything with my hair. I wasn’t allowed to get tattoos. I wasn’t allowed to have a certain boyfriend – it was a lot of rules very early on in my life. I just really wasn’t allowed to express myself in my own way.” She recounts an intense feeling of guilt about the things that were provided for her: “I got my stylist given to me. I got a personal trainer given to me. They told me what waist size I had to be. They told me what hip size I had to be.”
Feeling railroaded at every turn, it was difficult for Lottie to feel any sense of accomplishment from her high-profile campaigns. Obviously grateful for opportunities to work with icons like Karl Lagerfeld, and extending a “thank you to the magazines for giving me that opportunity,” Lottie gets introspective to admit that she still “can’t say I ever really felt proud of the things that I did. I’m not going to lie. For me, modeling is so easy. It was just like I showed up, they put clothes on me, and I did it. I never felt proud of anything.” And it was all compounded by heavy substance abuse.
Thankful that she had limited exposure to anything that could fall under a MeToo moment, Lottie instead was led down the hard-partying drug-fueled path by those around her in the industry. She digs deep to recount, “There were a lot of times where there were a lot of drugs flying around, and I went to rehab. I felt I was kind of pushed into things a little bit too quickly for how young I was, and I don’t think I should have been exposed to those sorts of things.”
Plenty of times, the line was crossed, with Lottie even telling us of “one situation where I was given drugs to stay on set because I didn’t wanna be there.” From that moment, she felt like she was on a dark path. She almost laughs as she darkly remembers, “Every time I had a problem in my life, I was like ‘Right, well, I’ll just do drugs then!’ Cause that’s how they programmed me.” While it worked for a while, helping her put on a happy face for hours at a time at events, there were plenty of moments when Lottie “was sitting in the makeup chair and they were just putting makeup on over my tears. It was sad.”
Lottie was feeling at her lowest prior to the pandemic, and everything started spiraling out of control. “I was really struggling mentally at the point just before Covid, in 2019, and then when Covid hit, it kind of got worse. I’d moved to LA at the beginning of 2020. I’d gotten my visa and everything, I brought my dog over to LA, and then I came back [to the UK], and my passport got stolen, Covid hit, and I couldn’t go back for almost a year and a half or two years. I think mentally, that really shook me up.”
Through her mental cloud, an epiphany finally hit Lottie, one that convinced her to leave her modeling agency and finally admit to herself, “Fuck them, I want to get out of this.” The only things Lottie feels proud of are “things that I really want to do,” and that’s why she knew she wanted out of modeling. “When I decided to leave, it was honestly so scary, but it was the best thing I’ve ever done.”
Ironically, what Lottie considers the best decision of her life was actually what initiated the harshly negative headlines of hitting “rock bottom.” Rather than continue on her path as a top model or pursue more acceptable opportunities in fashion, TV, or film, Lottie shocked the world by becoming an OnlyFans content creator. Lottie laughs out loud in nostalgia as she remembers the stunned response she got from most of her friends: “Are you having a mental breakdown?”
Thankfully, her family has since supported her transition to OnlyFans. “At first it was tricky for [my parents] to understand, I think, because they come from a really different generation and obviously, they’ve heard things about that industry. But I think in the end, they can see how happy I am now, so they’re just happy that I’m happy.”
It was a visit to her LA home that really kickstarted the new era of Lottie Moss. After being introduced to OnlyFans by a close friend who was on the platform, Lottie felt welcomed by the community and felt like she found a place where she fit in, especially after talking with more women on the site. “We had this one day where we had a bunch of girls over; we all had some drinks, and we were all in this big house in the Hills, and we were just taking pictures and having fun. And I was just like, ‘This is what I wanna do, this is so fun.’ She finally felt a place where she was not only valued, but where she felt at home, recalling that “I really feel I fit in with these people so much more than I ever felt like I fit in in the modeling industry.”
Along with rehab, she credits OnlyFans and her newfound community for digging her out of the hole she was in. More than anything, she sees the platform as a liberating display of feminism, something she felt almost afraid of in her youth. “When I was younger, I always just did things to please men because I was just so scared of fitting in. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve appreciated my female friends so much. Just being around women has opened my eyes to so many things. Having conversations with different women, and especially different women that do OnlyFans, and hearing their struggles, I think you can’t not be feminist.”
She now sees the harmful double standard placed upon women who use platforms like OnlyFans, pointing out that “people couldn’t be like, ‘Good for her, she’s making money and she’s happy.’’ It was like ‘Ew, she’s doing OnlyFans. That’s gross.’” It isn’t hard to see why she calls herself a “girl’s girl.” Simply put: “Men suck.”
Aside from overcoming her personal demons, it was her love of her “OG rebel icon” Paris Hilton that inspired Lottie to truly embrace her authentic self. Alongside a love for women that graced the screen on the E! program The Girls Next Door, which followed Hugh Hefner and his Playboy bunnies, Lottie recalls in awe how she always used to look up to Hilton on The Simple Life: “I just loved a blonde bombshell that dressed in cute clothes. That was my vibe. That’s always been my vibe. And now I get to do these things and run around in lingerie!”
It wasn’t just Hilton’s vibe she admired, but her business savvy. “I think she’s just a force. What she’s made of herself is why I think she’s really admirable. I think a lot of people thought that she was this dumb blonde, a bit of a joke, and I can really relate to that. She made this multimillion-dollar franchise out of herself, and she is so successful now. I’ve met her as well, and I just love how she’s the sweetest, nicest person. She’s definitely someone that I look up to.”
At the time of our Zoom interview, Lottie declared herself happier than ever, though itching to get back to LA, where she lives with her manager and two friends, posting a few times a week and having photoshoots. She is ecstatic about the financial opportunities OnlyFans affords (“The money is insane. It’s stupid!” she exclaims), not just for herself, but for those who are struggling. “There’s a lot of people out there that are working two jobs to support themselves and their families, and doing OnlyFans is a great opportunity for them to financially help other people or help themselves.”
That doesn’t mean it is easy work though. “I think a big misconception that people have is that you literally just take a couple pictures and then send it over and it’s done. It’s not like that. It’s a lot of time and effort and energy that is put into it, and into deciding what your vibe is gonna be on there, what you’re comfortable with.”
Lottie wants to facilitate that journey for women. Almost deciding to stay hush on the matter, she can’t help but give into her own excitement to tell us about a brand new business venture on the horizon: an all-female OnlyFans agency. While still in its “very early days,” Lottie animatedly gave us the rundown: “So me and the girls kind of came together, and we wanted to make a platform and a place where we could create content with other girls and make them feel safe. I think there’s a lot of girls thinking that they want to do it, but they don’t wanna have their pictures seen by creepy guys. They don’t want to take pictures with creepy guys. I think they’d be much more comfortable to start OnlyFans or have that conversation with a female who has done what me and my friends have had previous experiences with. I think they would trust us. That’s kind of how I want it to be… and I think, hopefully, people will start to take it more seriously in that regard.”
It is an agency she hopes will placate the surprisingly male-dominated realm of OnlyFans management, one run by men who, “in their small pea brains, think, ‘I love hot women, let me manage them.’” Too many men unfortunately take advantage of that power dynamic, feeling entitled to women’s bodies simply because they put themselves out on the internet. In Lottie’s own heated, almost angry words, “we put it out there ourselves with consent, what you’re doing is shadier.”
Despite common assumptions about OnlyFans, Lottie does not consider herself a sex worker, nor does she care for any specific label, though she acknowledges things aren’t that clear cut for everyone. She waffles for a moment, saying, “I think in some ways it is sex work, but then in some ways it’s not. It’s such a weird one, OnlyFans,” before definitively concluding that “you can’t really put it in a box. I don’t even know what I would call it.” What it is to Lottie is a place of stability and an escape from the sinister side of modeling she experienced so young.
Although Lottie’s choices may be considered controversial, in her mind the conservative mindset around sex is causing more danger than anything she it doing online. She states her philosophy firmly: “I think the more we speak about sex, the more we educate people on it. I think there’s a lot of really uneducated people in the world that don’t know a lot about sex because they refuse to speak about it. I think so many problems are created by not speaking about consent and sex, and it’s important to be speaking about these things that some people don’t have a clue about.” At the end of the day, “There’s over a hundred million users now on OnlyFans. People clearly want to see it. If you don’t want to see it, you don’t have to look.”
Lottie has not one regret; in fact, her current endeavors are those she feels most proud of. “I’ve got things going on at the moment that I’m really proud of myself for getting, things that are my choice to do that I worked hard to get. I didn’t really feel like I’d worked hard to get those [other things]. It did feel like they were handed to me because of who I was; who does Vogue for one of their first covers at 18 years old?”
Thankfully, Lottie has never really cared what other people think of her, seeing herself as “more of a person that really cares what my friends and family think about me. Random people just don’t bother me.” She casually brushes off critics, like that journalist, by reminding herself, “I’m doing so well, making loads of money, and living in this big house in Beverly Hills, going out with my friends, having the best time. So why do I care what you think?”
In one word, Lottie describes herself as “content” living a more authentic life. The journey ahead is ripe for Lottie, having taken control of her own image, and with her own agency in the works. The one thing she is certain of is this: doing The Untitled Magazine shoot awakened something in her. Sharing that for the first time she felt like herself in front of the camera for a magazine, she exclaimed, “I feel reborn. I think this is definitely the real me as well. The new, real Lottie.”
Interview by Indira Cesarine for The Untitled Magazine
To purchase your copy of The “REBEL” Issue featuring Lottie Moss, click here.
Photography by Nick Rhodes for The Untitled Magazine
Styling by Rebekah Roy
Make-up by Emma Miles
Hair by Jolanda Coetzee
Photographed on location at 23 Paul Street
