Kate Moss lookalike Denise Ohnona discusses traumatic car crash after wowing at Paris Fashion Week
Denise Ohnona, who was involved in a bad car crash as a teenager, and has since worked in the Liverpool docks, admits she didn't know who Kate Moss was when she was first compared with her in the 1990s.
Thursday 7 March 2024 15:46, UK
Kate Moss doppelganger Denise Ohnona says she never considered herself to be beautiful and has spent years getting over the trauma of a car crash which left her with bad facial scarring.
The 43-year-old mother-of-two recently wowed at Paris Fashion Week when she walked the Marine Serre Womenswear Fall/Winter 2024-2025 show on Monday.
Wearing skinny black leather trousers, a crisp white shirt and a slouchy black leather jacket, she left audiences scrabbling for their mobile phones, in the belief it was Moss making an appearance on the catwalk.
Described on her Instagram account - @iamnotkatemoss - as "the world's number-one Kate Moss lookalike," her pictures show her replicating famous catwalk appearances and adverts by the real Kate Moss.
The account has over 70,000 followers, including several Kate Moss fan accounts, but not the famous model herself.
A similar stunt at Chanel's Manchester takeover last year saw Ohnona pictured eating a McDonald's, a nod to Moss's much publicised 2009 comment, "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels".
Ohnona told BBC Radio 4's Today programme a bad car crash she was involved in when she was just 18 had left her with facial scars, as well as mental trauma.
She said: "My face took the brunt of it and smashed into the windscreen. The next time my mum saw me in the hospital my face was cut all open. It was really traumatic.
"It took me a long, long time to get over that, as well as the physical scars. I was mentally traumatised, and it did hold me back for many years."
She said she first became aware of her likeness to the supermodel, who was at the height of her fame in the 1990s, when she was aged around 14.
But she added she hadn't been that bothered about the comparison as she didn't know who Kate Moss was at the time.
She explained: "We didn't have Google. It wasn't until later on I found out who she was and when I first saw her, I was like, 'Oh my gosh she's gorgeous I am nothing like Kate'.
She went on: "I never considered myself beautiful or a model or anything like that."
Ohnona grew up in Liverpool, on Penny Lane - a street made famous by the Beatles.
While she was working in the clothes shop Next at the time of her accident, her facial scarring led her to seek a non-customer facing role after she had recovered, and she later worked in an administrative role on the Liverpool docks.
Ohnona, who is a full-time mum to daughters Elise, 13, and eight-year-old Anais, has only been modelling professionally for six years.
Meanwhile, Moss was discovered by Storm modelling agency aged just 14 at New York's JFK airport.
She went on to become one of the most successful supermodels of all time, dating stars including actor Johnny Depp and musician Pete Doherty, and is reported to be worth around £100m according to Forbes magazine.