kate moss blacks up for aids

last thursday, in the "red" edition of the uk's daily broadsheet, the independent, supermodel and icon of waifdom, Kate Moss, is featured on the cover "corked up" presumably as an african woman and looking more like a seal in an oil spill.

so yes, apparently this particular moment of black or "africafacing" is about raising money for aids (half the proceeds of the edition are to benefit africans with aids), and despite moss's undoubtable ties to fashion, according to the caption that frames her, this slicked up body is NOT a fashion statement. seems just a bit disingenuous seeing as though...well...she is a fashion model and the whole edition was designed by giorgio armani.

since my burgeouning dissertation is about resurgent modes of blackface and spectacles of neominstrel technopassing, this moment is particularly interesting for me.

first off, what's fashion got to do with all this? what is it about the necessity of the caption? Or in other words, when would tar babied Kate Moss BE a fashion statement? And how does this relate to the now infamous "I AM AFRICAN" campaign featuring such notable celebrities as gwyneth paltrow and conceptualized by Iman (another supermodel)?

of course blackness is always about style, but what is it about fashion (and in particular fashion putting on aids discourses) that becomes a convenient alibi for the corking up of these celebrity bodies?

i'm also interested in how Kate Moss's body reads here. of course her ultrathin body is already spectacularized. but how does that fashionable thinness perversely signify on the supposed thinness of the stereotypically malnourished or aids African body?