Fashion: Heven sent route to stardom: The minimodel Kate Moss is now the face of Opium perfume. Marion Hume reports

LITTLE Kate Moss, our 19-year- old, Croydon-born minimodel superstar, has just snared another high-yield deal. Already in receipt of big bucks for an exclusive contract with Calvin Klein - for whom she appears in girlish vests and knickers and little else - she will now have a significant number of francs to add to her bank account, having signed up as the face of the Yves Saint Laurent fragrance Opium.

She will not be ousting Lucie de la Falaise, her fellow teeny supermodel, who has been the face of Yves Saint Laurent's Paris fragrance since she was 16. But Opium is the big one. At its launch in 1977, the name alone was deemed so dangerous that the perfume was banned from New South Wales. The French crooner Charles Aznavour cut his Antipodean tour in protest. The first face for the fragrance was larger-than- life glamour girl Jerry Hall.

YSL gave Linda Evangelista this big campaign, and the big boost, so long ago she still had long hair. But only the print advertisement starring Ms Evangelista was shown outside France. The television commerical in which she went in search of a heady high in what looked like a real Opium den was deemed too risque to be shown elsewhere.

Three years ago the Spanish model Nastasia was the Opium girl. She looked just like Ingrid Bergman, which pleased the director David Lynch, who was then dating Bergman's daughter, Isabella Rossellini (who also looks just like Ingrid Bergman but, under contract as the face of competitor, Lancome, was unable to oblige.)

Ms Moss's print campaign has already been shot and the television commerical, to be directed by the Japanese director Satoshi, will be filmed at the end of the month. It is due to reach our screens this summer.

(Photograph omitted)