Yahoo Finance Jordan Barrett: Who is Kate Moss’ hot new BFF?
When Kate Moss is the ringbearer at your wedding, you can’t be doing badly when it comes to making it big in the fashion world.
And if Jordan Barrett’s LFW squad is anything to go by, he already has. This week, the smouldering Australian model has been pictured on London’s f’row alongside fashion royalty including Boy George, Lila Moss and Vogue editor Edward Enninful. The figure always at his side? His BFF and super-agent Kate Moss.
According to insiders, Moss has selected the 24-year-old as her protégé after he gained the nickname Baby Moss as a teenager for his glowing skin, heart-shaped pout and chiseled cheekbones.
He’s now represented by her agency and is regularly spotted on the supermodel’s arm, whether it’s posing for fashion shoots with Gigi Hadid or frolicking naked in Ibiza at Barrett’s secret wedding last month.
So who is he and who is the mystery fiancée he kept secret until the big day? From his wild child roots to the (surprising) sport he uses to manage his mental health, this is everything you need to know about fashion’s hottest new kid on the block.
A wild childhood Down Under
He might be just 24, but Barrett has already been modelling for a decade. He was first signed by IMG Australia at the age of 13 - rumour has it he was scouted while shoplifting matches from a convenience store in the Gold Coast, where he grew up.
According to Australian news site News.com.au, his father Adrian is a convicted drug dealer who was jailed for his involvement in a $12 million drug ring in Queensland. But Barrett has since said his father gave him the best career advice he’s had.
“[He said] always to be polite and always to keep my head on my shoulders and keep grounded,” he told The Daily Telegraph in 2018.
Four years after being scouted, Barrett moved to New York, spending the next six years posing with some of the industry’s biggest names, with campaigns for Tom Ford, Balmain, Versace, Moschino and Coach. He was reportedly paid $100,000 to appear in a Justin Cassin show for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Sydney.
But the chiseled teen didn’t just make a name for himself as a pretty face. He quickly gained a reputation as the industry’s wild child, partying with the likes of Paris Hilton and Bella Hadid.
“Not since the supermodel heyday of the 1990s have fashion mannequins been so voraciously trailed by paparazzi,” fashion commentator Derek Blasberg wrote for Vogue in 2018 after photos of a topless Barrett peering down from the window of Hadid’s apartment emerged in the tabloids (the pair insisted they were just friends).
“The incident illustrates just how hastily [Bella] and Jordan, also 20, have climbed into the upper echelons of the fashion industry.”
From model to movie-star
Like many a teenage fashion darling, Barrett has spent his more recent years branching beyond the modelling industry. Last year he signed with leading talent powerhouse, Creative Artists Agency, reportedly landing a role in a major Hollywood film, and he is launching a range of merchandise and sustainable clothing through his his art project Sedated.
“I’m studying and working with dialect and acting coaches in New York and Los Angeles,” he told The Daily Telegraph in 2017.
Clearly, it’s been a smart move. Reports in 2018 suggest he owned a $1.5 million apartment in New York and according to WHO magazine last year, Barrett’s net worth was roughly $2.9 million - not bad for the age of 24.
But like many young models, Barrett has clearly found that fame comes with a price. Despite famously once admitted that modelling was “not that hard” (“you’re just walking in clothes, really”), the young model has since spoke of the impact his work has had on his mental health.
“When I was scouted, I didn’t even understand what it meant to be a model,” he told GQ in April of his early career. “I didn’t know what was going on in my mind. I didn’t even know what a panic attack was until now.
“You can see why, I think, some people make the choices they make. Or why they do certain things while… not really understanding what’s going on with their mental health. I think there’s a lot of change that needs to be made in that realm. As a generational thing, I don’t think it’s talked about enough.”
Since slowing down during the pandemic, Barrett says he’s had time “to work out what was going on in [his] head” and told GQ he’s found some (surprising) new hobbies to help: breathwork, ice bath therapy and free diving, which involves learning to hold your breath underwater for prolonged periods of time without scuba gear.
“The breathing, the diving and some ice bath therapy – I think it’s been one of the most helpful things I’ve ever done. It’s helped me to calm my mind, and get those endorphins going in different ways,” he told GQ, saying it was his role model Cyrill Gutsch, founder of eco advocacy group Parley for the Oceans, who introduced him to the diving.
“Breath work has really changed me, so has moving my body, jumping in the ocean…,” he added. “Even meditating for five minutes. If I could get that message out there for kids – not just kids but adults too – so they feel confident this is something people can actually talk about.”
Mysterious boy
Barrett’s Instagram, @iblamejordan, has more than 1.3 million followers and is a mosaic of sultry snaps, half-naked thirst-traps and selfies with A-listers. In 2018 he posted a black-and-white shot with Kate Moss and Gigi Hadid by Mario Testino captioned “family portrait”, and supermodel Emily Ratajkowski has made regular appearances alongside him over the years.
In 2018 a shot of Barratt and Ratajkowski posing on a yacht in Capri attracted 63,000 likes and that same year a picture of Ratajkowski standing topless in front of a mirror prompted speculation about whether the pair were romantically linked.
Barrett has been speculatively linked with a string of supermodels over the years, but attention on his romantic life stepped up a gear when Barrett announced his engagement this summer. “I believe in love not the traditional kind, so I guess I just commit new chapter of my life,” he wrote on Instagram in July. “Also... did I also just get engaged on this date. Yes,” he added, without any mention of who his fiancée was.
Last month, all was revealed. The mystery lover? Fellow male model Fernando Casablancas, who Barrett revealed in a boomerang selfie video captioned “plot twist” on his Instagram two days after the wedding. “It was three years ago that Fernando spotted me in Berlin on New Year’s Eve,” he wrote in Vogue later that month. “We bumped into each other in the garden, and spent the rest of the night together. From that moment onwards, the two of us pretty much never separated.”
The pair married in a small ceremony in Ibiza on August 12, attended by around 15 of their closest friends including Moss, Georgia May Jagger and US playwright Jeremy O Harris. “I’ve never been into labels,” Barrett explained in Vogue, calling the wedding “a celebration of our friendship and love on our own terms”.
According to the Daily Mail, the “spontaneous” wedding was organised by celebrity party planner Serena Cook and it was a relaxed affair, with A-list friends standing into key roles since Barrett’s family from Australia were unable to attend. Moss brought out the rings (Chrome Hearts bands they’d picked in Paris), Jagger made the best man speech “recounting some of the many misadventures we’d had in LA”, and celebrity makeup artist Charlotte Tilbury looked after beauty.
She “used all of her magic creams and potions on me, and prepped everyone for the evening (and the morning after), then she and Kate did a sage cleansing ritual in the garden,” Barrett told Vogue afterwards.
Clearly, it was an intimate affair. Pictures on Barrett and Casablancas’ Instagrams show them lying topless together in a garden, Barrett and Moss naked in a bathroom getting ready, and bronzed guests sitting around the villa in towels.
They did, however, put clothes on for the ceremony itself. Photos on Casablanca’s Instagram show the pair having their first dance in black sleeveless tops and matching pants, with Barrett completing the look with a gold head chain from Messika by Kate Moss.
The wedding might have been all about his new husband, but for fashion’s new king Barrett, super-mentor Moss was still centre stage.
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