As Kate Moss becomes the latest recruit to the celebrity wellness scene, WH reports on the rise and rise of the party girl health-over
Carlotta Artuso can pinpoint precisely the moment she realised the heady highs of her party lifestyle were no longer worth the lows. Festive cheer hung in the air that crisp Saturday morning in December 2019 – but the Londonbased PR, now 31, was running on two hours’ sleep – and a large measure of self-loathing. It was a 5am-er with a friendship circle fuelled by merlot and drugs that left her repeatedly rushing to the toilet on a packed airport-bound coach to catch an early flight back home to Italy. ‘I realised then and there that the effects of too much drink and drugs were finally catching up with me,’ she recalls, of how her carefree twenties had turned toxic.
After that journey home, Carlotta had had enough, and by March 2020, the fuzzy brain, shaking limbs and toll on her mental wellbeing had tipped her into the sweet embrace of wellness. So she spent the pandemic experimenting with sobriety, breath work, Muay Thai and ice baths with the same enthusiasm she’d once shown for dancing until dawn. These days, she’ll enjoy a single Aperol spritz over dinner and be tucked up in bed by midnight ready for a sober morning rave – calm in the knowledge that her happiness, skin and energy levels have never been better.
Model behaviour
The health scene is well-nourished with inspirational transformational stories – from influencers managing illness through nutrition to young professionals easing burnout with meditation and new mums regaining confidence via fitness. But the tale of the party girl glow-up is perhaps the most enticing of all. The latest poster woman for the trend is Kate Moss, whose new wellness brand Cosmoss – complete with teas, scents and serums – is said to be inspired by the 48-year-old’s own healthy lifestyle. It’s a far cry from her 90s reputation, when she was allegedly known as ‘the tank’ for the quantity of alcohol and drugs she could consume and accessorised every minidress with a pack of Marlboro Lights. A reckoning arrived in 2005 when photos emerged of her taking cocaine in a scandal that cost her several lucrative contracts. Moss later issued a public apology. But the model, who went sober in 2017, says she’s been on a journey of ‘healing’, telling British Vogue last August that meditation, gardening and early nights have helped ‘fix’ her ‘f**ked’ adrenal glands and nervous system.
But while Moss is the latest former wild child to find wellness, the path has been well-trodden – not least by some of her Primrose Hill pals. Rosemary Ferguson, now a naturopathic nutritionist; menopause-campaigning Meg Mathews; and Pilates-loving Sadie Frost. Fearne Cotton has swapped vodka-fuelled house parties for mental health managemen
