The model Kate Moss has been named the latest creative director of Diet Coke. She will work across projects including a collection, advertising campaign films and events around the brand’s 40th anniversary.
Moss said on Friday she was “thrilled to join the Diet Coke family”, adding: “I love the past collaborations they’ve done with such incredible names in fashion.”
Michael Willeke, the integrated experience director for Europe at the Coca-Cola company, said the company was “honoured to appoint Kate Moss as our new creative director, continuing Diet Coke’s rich history of collaborating with some of the biggest names in fashion and culture”.
It is striking that, in an era of body positivity, a diet drink has partnered with a woman known for her slender physique and the famous pronouncement that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”.
The fashion industry publication Women’s Wear Daily suggested the collaboration harked back to a time when waifish physiques were in fashion. The writer Tianwei Zhang described Moss as “a poster child for the skinny model trend in the early aughts which was associated with models drinking this sugar-free beverage backstage and off-duty”.
Diet Coke’s connection with fashion is longstanding. Moss follows other fashion faces who have occupied the creative director role. Diet Coke has previously partnered with the designers Karl Lagerfeld, Jean Paul Gaultier and Marc Jacobs, and the drink was a sponsor at London fashion week in February.
The drink has previously been namechecked by former models as part of a meagre diet to stay thin enough to succeed in the industry. In her 2017 memoir, the former model Victoire Maçon Dauxerre wrote about limiting her calorie intake to three apples a day and Diet Coke, while the former Vogue Australia editor Kirstie Clements called cigarettes and Diet Coke “dietary staples” for models.
This appointment is aligned with the drink’s 40th anniversary. First launched in 1982, Diet Coke was the second most popular soft drink in the UK in 2021, second only to full-fat Coke. Its market share was valued at £217.1m.
Moss denounced “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” in 2018. “There’s so much more diversity now,” she told NBC’s Megyn Kelly. “I think it’s right. There’s so many different sizes and colours and heights.”
