‘We were all wagons’ – Kate Moss reveals Irish nickname as fans point out misunderstanding

Kate Moss at the Portrait Gala at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2019

Seoirse Mulgrew

Kate Moss has raised some Irish eyebrows after a video surfaced of the British supermodel speaking about her time in Ireland and a ‘nickname’ she got while here.

The model turned 49 on Monday and to celebrate her birthday, British Vogue shared a clip on TikTok of a snippet from a previous interview.

The interview, which was published on the magazine’s YouTube channel in 2021, shows Ms Moss answering a series of questions from her famous friends and family.

American model and humanitarian Christy Turlington Burns asked Ms Moss: “Do you remember why we call you ‘little wagon’ and where we were when we started doing it?”

“Naomi and I have been calling you ‘little wagon’ for a very long time and I can’t remember how that started,” Turlington said.

In the video, Ms Moss responds: "We were in Ireland, and we got a little bit tipsy at a wedding, and I think in Irish ‘wagon’ is ‘drunk’.

"So, basically we were all wagons. Because during that time we were all doing shows, drinking a lot of champagne and calling each other wagon."

Scores of Irish people responded on social media by pointing out the model’s misunderstanding of the commonly used Irish slang term.

One Twitter user said: “I am screaming at some middle-aged woman working a banquet hall calling Kate Moss a wagon and it forever altering the course of history.”

Another said: “This is just brilliant, who wants to tell her.”

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Speaking to The Sunday Times in the UK in 2016, fellow UK supermodel Naomi Campbell explained the origin of the nickname.

Ms Campbell was engaged to the U2 musician Adam Clayton in 1993, and she and Kate often visited Ireland, where reportedly Bono’s wife, Ali Hewson, dubbed them ‘the wagons’ after meeting them.

“Kate was little wagon, Christy [Turlington] was the original wagon and I was black wagon,” Ms Campbell told the publication.

“It’s because… we’re wagons, because we’re naughty, we enjoy our life, we laugh, just girls having fun.”

According to the respected online dictionary Foclóir.ie, the definition of a ‘wagon’ is an ‘unpleasant woman’.