On her 30th birthday last year, Kate Moss threw a party entitled The Beautiful and the Damned. When somebody asked if she was enjoying herself, she replied that she felt more damned than beautiful. Imagine how she must feel today.

Grainy photographs of what appears to be the world’s most sought-after supermodel snorting cocaine from a CD case with her lover Pete Doherty were yesterday splashed over five pages of a national newspaper. Though Moss hardly pretends to lead the life of a detox queen — her reputation as a hard-drinking, chain-smoking party girl is legend — the publicity is unlikely to amuse Chanel, Calvin Klein, Christian Dior and Rimmel, with whom she has lucrative contracts.

If the pictures are genuine, some will say it was inevitable ever since January when Moss, worth £30 million, fell for Doherty, frontman of the rock group Babyshambles and self-confessed junkie. Ominously, they are being dubbed the new Sid and Nancy. Doherty has a tattoo of the letter K encircled by a red heart. Kate, mindful of her modelling work, has reciprocated with a tiny P.

It was in 1990 when, as a gawky schoolgirl, she was shot for the cover of The Face that Moss, the skinny girl from Croydon, was set for icon status. She had been spotted at JFK airport by Sarah Doukas, founder of Storm modelling agency. Though she looked like a child, Doukas noticed her exceptional bone structure.

Some critics claimed Moss’s low weight and androgynous figure were encouraging “heroin chic”. But she was an overnight sensation. Everybody liked her, she was normal, unpretentious and didn’t throw tantrums. But in the 1990s, after her relationship with the actor Johnny Depp ended, she checked in to The Priory for six weeks, admitting that she had been doing “too much partying”.

Now that she has a daughter, from a relationship with Jefferson Hack, she was said to have eased up on the fast living and taken more early nights. Maybe these photographs are her wake-up call.