Named Model of the Year, she tops the Tatler Best Dressed list and is the new face of Burberry: so is Agyness Deyn the new Kate Moss, asks JACKIE HUNTER
SO, IS she or isn't she? The new Kate Moss, that is. A resounding buzz has followed the British model Agyness Deyn ever since this peroxided, pixie-faced tomboy made her catwalk debut at New York Fashion Week in September 2006. Many slender-limbed h
opefuls have approached the altar of Ms Moss during her long and illustrious career in the hope of being anointed, but none has put so much as a dent in her crown, let alone succeeded in stealing it.
Until now. Since she won the Model of the Year title at last November's British Fashion Awards, Agyness Deyn's face has become as ubiquitous in the gossip columns as it has in the pages of Vogue, Elle and Harper's Bazaar. She was the star of London Fashion Week last month, storming the catwalk at the House of Holland show in tartan mini-kilt and a rakish matching eyepatch.
But this week she has delivered two knockout punches which indicate potential staying power: not only does Deyn grace the cover and eight inside pages of Time magazine's Style & Design issue this month, but yesterday she dethroned the woman who has topped Tatler magazine's prestigious annual Best Dressed list for the past two years – yes, Kate Moss.
So who is Agyness Deyn and what does she want? And why is everyone, from top fashion editors to paparazzi photographers to teenage wannabes, completely in thrall to her right now?
"I like to have fun," Deyn has said about her modelling success. "Sometimes I'm a funky frock lady and other times I just go to the opposite character that the clothes dictate. I've always been into fashion, always changing the way I looked, ripping up and putting stuff together."
Wherever it comes from, the world's top designers love her style. Deyn was born Laura Hollins in the Lancashire village of Littleborough, near Rochdale, in February 1983. She recently celebrated her 25th birthday, though her "official" age – for the benefit of a youth-obsessed modelling industry – is 22.
Ten years ago, she was earning pocket money behind the counter of a local fish-and-chip shop, where a regular customer was Henry Holland (who became a friend and later a fellow fashion-industry star with his cheeky House of Holland slogan T-shirts). In 1999 Hollins won a "Face of the Year" modelling competition in a local newspaper and became focused on the pursuit of fame. She left Lancashire for London, working in a burger joint and as a cleaner and barmaid, before heading north again and enrolling at Hull University to briefly study drama and music.
It was in north London, around 2000, she says, that the lanky, pretty northerner was spotted on the street by a photographer, which led to her being signed up by Models 1, the biggest agency in Europe. However, it still took several years and another transformation before her new name, Agyness Deyn, began to cause excitement in fashion circles.
For a while she kicked around London's Nu-Rave music scene, hanging out with the East End in-crowd. In 2005 she also started dating Josh Hubbard, the guitarist with Hull-born band The Paddingtons.
In November 2006, Deyn appeared on the cover of Italian Vogue, photographed by top fashion snapper Stephen Meisel and, crucially, sporting the zingy crop now inspiring teenage girls to consign their long tresses and sexy fringes to the salon floor and reach for the bleach.
But why Agyness? And why now?
"She's free-spirited and always stands out from the crowd," says Christopher Bailey, the creative director of fashion house Burberry, in whose spring 2008 advertising campaign Deyn currently stars. Her predecessor as the face of the brand? Kate Moss.
You'll doubtless have spotted Deyn's doll-like blue eyes staring out from Burberry's adverts on billboards and in numerous glossy magazines. "She's the girl everyone wants to be," Bailey says simply.
For more than a decade people have said the same thing about Moss. So what is it about Deyn that makes her equally cool? Her look is more androgynous than Moss's – Deyn's eyes are round rather than cat-like and emphasised by heavy, black eyebrows. And Deyn's attitude is younger – more punky and playful compared with Moss's aloof, boudoir sexiness.
There are strong similarities in Deyn's look to those of models such as Jenny Howarth and Kristin McMenemy, who graced the covers of Elle and Vogue in the late 1980s and early 90s, as well as Karen Elson and Erin O'Connor from the past decade (in the days before the latter started modelling smock tops for M&S).
Richard Gray, the fashion features director of lifestyle magazine 10, believes that Deyn's moment has arrived as a result of the cycle according to which fashion operates.
"Every ten years we regurgitate what went before," he says. "In the late 1990s there was a seismic shift from heroin chic to full-bodied glamour and curvier girls; from asexual to very sexualised."
He says that it now appears to have switched back, hence the industry's embracing of Deyn's cute, boyish look.
"It's also a rejection of celebrity that we're seeing," he continues. "Kate Moss is now more of a celebrity than a model, and celebs are no longer seen as a credible vehicle for high-end fashion designers."
But is Deyn not in danger of becoming a celebrity too? Her face is everywhere, not only in campaigns for Burberry and Giorgio Armani, but also on magazine covers and in the red-tops. She even appeared recently as a guest on Jonathan Ross's BBC1 chat show, giggling and gossiping in a charmingly unadulterated Lancashire brogue. Contrast this with Kate Moss, who has maintained a sphinx-like silence throughout her career, wisely acknowledging her professional purpose is to be looked at, not listened to.
"The great thing about Kate Moss is that whatever the media says, she never comments, never complains. That's how she has retained her mystique for so long," Gray observes.
Whether Deyn can play the long game, with chameleon-like style changes and ignoring public opinion, it is too early to say. But at the moment she is indisputably No 1.
Gray agrees: "Agyness has pipped Kate to the top of Tatler's list this year because she embodies the London spirit: it's the city everyone is looking to right now in terms of fashion. She's just terribly British."
