When Kate Moss fell for a famous drug addict recently, two icons of the fashion and rock worlds appeared to be set on a doomed course. A wailing arose from the media’s self-appointed guardians of the 31-year-old British supermodel.

Don’t do it, they pleaded. “He’s a hopeless junkie who was ditched by his frustrated bandmates and who, unless he gets his act together fairly soon, will no doubt be found dead in a seedy squat,” Jane Moore warned in The Sun.

The 25-year-old rocker in question is Pete Doherty, frontman of the Libertines, who was sacked in 2003 over his admitted addiction to crack cocaine and heroin. He went on to front Babyshambles. Doherty, a father of one, was sent to prison for burgling the flat of his best friend to buy drugs in 2003. He was perfect casting for the pantomime villain.

The outpouring of protectiveness towards Moss was in stark contrast to the vitriol that greeted her sudden stardom as a teenage model. The girl from Croydon, south London, was too skinny. She was the cause of “heroin chic”. Her androgynous looks encouraged paedophilia.

But something happened. Her soft beauty was compared with the “hardness” of other models. Her eyes seemed alive, not vacant like theirs. She was normal, unpretentious and did not throw tantrums like Naomi Campbell. Most of all, the media decided she was likeable.

They agonised over her heartbreak when Johnny Depp, the film star, walked out on her. They lectured her on drink and drugs after she was admitted to the Priory clinic for “exhaustion”. They praised her curvaceous shape when she was pregnant, celebrated the birth of her daughter Lila Grace two years ago and voiced regret when she dumped the child’s father, Jefferson Hack, who co-founded the trendy magazine Dazed and Confused.

Although not as winsome as Twiggy, the face of the 1960s, Moss was the face of the 1990s and has proved just as enduring.

So the sentinels reacted with alarm earlier this month when she showed signs of becoming smitten with Doherty at her 31st birthday party at her 17th-century Cotswold farmhouse. She then took him to meet her parents. Things did not go well. “Ever since they’ve called me the crackhead,” he lamented.

Doherty was not so easily written off. He had plighted his troth to the catwalk queen by getting a tattoo of the letter K, encircled by a red heart. Moss reciprocated. “Because of her modelling work, Kate just had a tiny P done,” he said.

Moss was said to be fascinated by Doherty because he was “dangerous, exciting, creative and very talented”. But last week the drama seemed to have reached its final act, when the model stopped taking his calls. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief — except Doherty, who promised to give up drugs if they could stay together.

Moss reportedly told “friends”: “I’m not into having a long-term relationship with him. He’s a bit too crazy for me.”

There are those who believe it is time that Moss grew up. A model’s life is often a sort of extended adolescence, punctuated by parties and excess, but responsibility for a child is meant to change the game.

Her smoking and lifestyle are affecting her looks, marked by wrinkling around the eyes that will get worse over the next five years. Beauticians have noted that her chin shows signs of sagging and the shape of her face is becoming less angular and defined.