“I remember sitting next to her and feeling like my heart was going to stop. I was completely overwhelmed by her charm and beauty.” That’s how the Italian photographer Mario Sorrenti describes his first meeting with Kate Moss in a new book of his previously unpublished images of the model. Their encounters in the summer of 1991, first at a fashion shoot, then at a party in South Kensington, were the start of a two-year affair during which she became his girlfriend and muse for some of the most memorable fashion images of the decade.

“Kate and I would hang out and take pictures all the time,” writes Sorrenti. “Being broke made printing my photographs a luxury that I could rarely afford, so I would make contact sheets, cut out the images I liked and tape them into a diary to keep track of what I was shooting. She was a big part of my life.”

In 1993 Calvin Klein was so taken with Sorrenti’s diaries that the photos became the basis for the Obsession fragrance campaign that launched Moss’s career. These photos show the (largely naked) 17-year-old before her flawless face became as famous as the Mona Lisa’s: hanging up a bikini on a makeshift washing line, or swimming in a natural pool, her unmade-up beauty mirroring the wildness of the desert island setting. There’s an intimacy and authenticity which sets these images apart from the usual commercial seduction between model and consumer.

Since then, Moss has been described as a muse for photographers and designers from Corinne Day to Alexander McQueen, and the fragrance she released in 2010 was called Vintage Muse. She is one of only a handful of models who have been elevated to the status of muse, helping to shape the zeitgeist and bring shoots alive. Others in the exclusive group include Jean Shrimpton, posing for David Bailey in the 1960s, Nicolle Meyer, who appeared in Guy Bourdin’s 1970s photographs, the “Supers’’, and their celluloid rapport with Peter Lindbergh in the 1990s, and Daria Werbowy looking a little bit inscrutable for lookalike designer Phoebe Philo at Céline.

Being a muse suggests a particular magic, an ability to stir up creative powers and help the artist weave their spell. In both art and fashion, it is an intriguing and complex relationship, although not always an entirely balanced one.

The concept of the muse originated in Greco-Roman mythology, coming from the goddess daughters of Zeus who inspired creativity in liberal sciences and the arts. They have often been depicted as passive objects of beauty, inviting the viewer to judge and appreciate them. This is an attitude art critic John Berger picked up on in his seminal 1972 television series Ways of Seeing in which he says, “a woman in the culture of privileged Europeans is first and foremost a sight to be looked at”. He believed that women absorbed this patriarchal norm, and that “men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at”.

And while today there are numerous female artists, from Cindy Sherman to Nan Goldin to Marina Abramovic, with their own muses, be they abstract characters or real people, in the Western art canon it’s often been women playing the muse to the famous male artist. Pablo Picasso had at least six such relationships, including with the surrealist photographer Dora Maar who was the basis for Weeping Woman, and Fernande Olivier who was a model for Les Démoiselles d’Avignon. When their split left her near destitute she wrote a sensational memoir about their time together.

In October, the Barbican Art Gallery in London will host the exhibition Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-Garde, which curator Jane Alison says “is full of muses”. One of the aims is to highlight the role of the muse in numerous artistic collaborations. “It is so important to rethink their place,” says Alison. “Usually a woman, the muse has all too frequently been written off as simply decoration, something solely to be looked at. I believe that this has meant that so-called ‘muses’ who were also artists were then marginalised.”

Camille Claudel, for instance, had a tempestuous relationship with Rodin, and her work as a sculptor was overshadowed by his. Alison also notes that, “the muse was frequently actively engaged in shaping their own identity – in fact, an active participant in the work of art, in which she/he is also the subject.”

As well as partnerships such as that between the Bauhaus artist Lucia Moholy, and her husband Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, in which he received the credit for their ground-breaking photos, there are several examples of reciprocal relationships in the Barbican exhibition, such as that between photographer Alfred Stieglitz and his wife Georgia O’Keeffe, the painter, and photographers Man Ray and Lee Miller. Alison says “it is quite clear that O’Keeffe was very involved in the shaping of a vast body of work that allowed her to perform different aspects of her identity – earth goddess, dandy, religious icon, empowered woman. They were co-conspirators in this process.”

Lee Miller was active in shaping the way that she was presented in the photos and, like O’Keeffe, was an artist in her own right. There are also examples of women artists inspired by men. “Diego Rivera was a kind of muse for Frida Kahlo and Max Ernst for Dorothea Carrington,” says Alison. The show also explores “same-sex relationships where the idea of the muse is very much in evidence – for instance Romaine Brooks’ stunning portrait of Luisa Casati, with whom she had a liaison.”

Though radically different in their aesthetic and time, Robert Mapplethorpe’s portraits of his lover, collaborator and muse Patti Smith have a similar power. No one but Mapplethorpe could have taken a portrait like the one on the cover of her 1975 album Horses. No fashion shoot has bettered the vision of nonchalant androgyny conveyed by her white shirt and undone skinny tie, and Mapplethorpe captures the raw originality of her personality.

Another potent partnership between a photographer and his model muse was that of Irving Penn and Lisa Fonssagrives. In 1950 Penn was sent to Paris by US Vogue to photograph the haute couture collections. When the incredibly poised Fonssagrives came to his studio Penn was swept off his feet, just as Sorrenti was by Kate Moss. He later recalled, “when Lisa came in, I saw her and my heart beat fast and there was never any doubt that this was it”. They married that year. The model, who trained as a dancer, had a deep understanding of posing and posture, as well as an interest in photographic techniques, which helped Penn to take some of the most striking and elegant fashion images of the 1950s.

It was in the same decade that designer Hubert de Givenchy met Audrey Hepburn, who went on to become his lifelong friend and muse. Their friendship began in 1953 when Givenchy provided Hepburn’s costumes for the film Sabrina, and reached its cultural pinnacle when he designed her little black dress with cutaway back for Breakfast at Tiffany’s. While platonic, their relationship had a creative frisson – Givenchy described it as “like a special love affair” – and it’s inconceivable that he could have created such a perfect vision of understated sophistication for anyone but the gamine Hepburn.

It was a partnership celebrated by Givenchy’s artistic director Clare Waight Keller in her most recent couture collection for the house. With the dreamy tones of “Moon River” playing in the background the catwalk show closed with a long black hooded gown featuring a curved detail at the back which echoed the Breakfast at Tiffany’s dress. Following Hubert de Givenchy’s recent death at the age of 91, Waight Keller was paying homage to the designer, revisiting his archives and the utter elegance of his clothes. The invocation of a founder’s aesthetic spirit can also be seen at Chanel, where Karl Lagerfeld collections for the house are invariably inspired by aspects of Coco Chanel’s life and legacy.

The designer Peter Dundas, who is known for his gang of photogenic jet-set friends, says a muse “can be someone I aspire to dress or someone iconic in fashion or music history, although it is of course great when I can have an active dialogue with my Dundas girls”. His glossy muses help shape his sequinned, embellished and fringed confections. He says they “embody the spirit of the house or part of my brand aesthetic. A muse is an inspiration, a sounding board, even a benchmark when working on a collection. I collaborate with some on parts of Dundas and others inspire me by wearing the collection. Eugenie Niarchos and Bianca Brandolini are close friends who try on the clothes and give me wish lists of what they need. Stylist and friend Marie-Lou Bartoli and I often vintage shop together in LA or New York. In addition to having great taste she looks amazing in my clothes. Beyoncé and Natasha Poly inspire me and fuel my imagination.”

Dundas highlights the modern merging of the role of muse with that of influencer, saying that today “often a muse is also a brand ambassador either officially or unofficially”. In the social media age, empowered by “likes”, the muse has a new reach and relevance that many of her predecessors could only dream of. 

‘Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-Garde’, is at the Barbican Art Gallery, London from 10 October to 27 January; ‘Kate’ by Mario Sorrenti is published by Phaidon on 7 September, £79.95

One of the first objects that catches my eye in the Margaret Howell shop on London’s Wigmore Street is a book entitled Ornament is Crime. It’s about Modernist architecture but has a certain resonance when it comes to Howell’s clothes. She might not share quite the radical attitude of architect Adolf Loos, who originated a version of the phrase, but her clothes have a pared-down simplicity that perfectly marries form and function.

I meet Howell, now design director of the brand that she founded in 1970, in one of several light-filled, white-walled offices behind the shop, where the design studio is also located. One of fashion’s more down-to-earth personalities, who looks a decade younger than her 71 years, she is dressed in a roomy black-and-white gingham shirt and black trousers, with black Nike trainers, and the kind of black-framed glasses associated with architects.

Howell hasn’t had a formal fashion education, but a hands-on, instinctive attitude to creativity has served her well. She says making things was how “we amused ourselves growing up” and that “if you intuitively know what you want then you can just do it”. Howell and her sister would make their own clothes in the 1960s, and she would seek out French patterns because they had a sharper cut than the English ones, which, she says, would “come out way off beam”.

Helping her sister to silkscreen scarves gave her the idea of making things to sell, and her handmade beads and knitted accessories caught the eye of Vogue. In 1970 she began designing men’s shirts, and in 1973 set up her own studio and workroom. Four years later, the first Margaret Howell menswear shop opened in London in partnership with Joseph Ettedgui, and its popularity with women prompted a men’s and women’s shop in 1980. In the early days she would buy a shirt pattern and alter it according to a “process of trial and error”. She applied what she learned at her art school drawing classes to making clothes, down to “the positioning of a pocket”.

Since around 2002, Howell has stepped back from designing to oversee the collections and areas such as visual merchandising – but the depth of her involvement is clear from the consistency of the brand’s aesthetic, whether in clothes, campaigns or its series of art calendars (2018’s version is devoted to British post-war public art).

She sold a stake in the brand to Japanese company Anglobal in 1990, when turnover was less than £500,000. It now exceeds £100m, but Howell still gives everything her personal seal of approval. “I’ve just done three days of going through the collections where I try everything on,” she says in her soft, thoughtful tone. “It’s important that you find out all the little details and try it yourself. That feeling of fit and casualness that l want has to be there.”

Since Howell opened this shop in 2002, it has offered a window into her world. Of course there are rails of clothes – when I visit the first pieces from AW18, such as a pie-crust collar blouse and pleat-front trousers, are just being introduced – but there are also books and design objects, and the store regularly hosts exhibitions, the most recent of which showed the work of the late textile designer Bernat Klein. Howell says she sees herself as a lifestyle brand, and she was curating her space well before the latest wave of boutiques started mixing up homewares, art and clothes (and before “curation” became one of fashion’s buzzwords).

“Just having a few pots in a shop doesn’t work,” she shrugs, “but here it’s because we want to promote someone who might be of interest. The pots and the ceramics are useful, and we started to import handmade designs which we find when we visit the Japanese side of the business.” Like other quintessentially British brands such as Paul Smith, Margaret Howell is a big deal in Japan: in 1982 the company signed a licence with Washo, Tokyo, to manufacture and sell the designs, and now there are more than 100 outlets selling the collections there.

From artisanal glassware and ceramics, to household supplies such as chopping boards with a pleasing utilitarian chic, everything in the William Russell-designed store is perfectly in tune with the Howell aesthetic, and actually useful. No gold statuettes here. The till area features a bank of books such as Space, Hope and Brutalism, as well as Mid-Century Modern tiles; there are ceramics, including a blue-and-white striped teapot and cups thrown by Kazuma Tamaki in the Kasama pottery region of Japan, Isokon “Penguin Donkey” book stands and a 1957 Robin Day sofa. Then there are the lamps, which Howell has created in collaboration with British company Anglepoise in china blue, eau de Nil and, Howell adds, “a citrusy yellow based on one that I pulled out of a skip”.

Her palette tends towards earthy shades such as moss, charcoal, stone, navy and umber. “Occasionally we do bright colours,” she says, “but they have to be the right brights. There was a red linen which was very vibrant.” She points to a pinkish shirt in an indefinable shade – rose meets peach meets terracotta. “I prefer colours that you can’t really name such as that sort of salmony colour.”

The foraging mentality behind the yellow lamp also triggered one of Howell’s design collaborations. She used to drive past a house-clearance shop which had furniture by Ercol for sale on the pavement, and it occurred to her that when it came to the design objects in her shop, she could focus on British products. “I was known as a British brand and I do have this fondness for some of our heritage in manufacturing and cloth,” she says. “At the time there was a lot of publicity around Eames, and Scandinavian and American design, so I thought, ‘why don’t we put forward some of our British designers?’, like Kenneth Grange [the product designer behind 1958 Venner parking meters and 1972 Adshel bus stop benches] and Robert Welch [whose brushed stainless steel salad servers are on sale in the shop].” Howell approached Ercol in 2002, and together they reissued several chairs and a nest of tables.

“It was at a time when [Ercol’s] style had become quite middle-aged, but we could see that what they did in the 1950s and 1960s looked pretty good,” she says. “I realise we were quite influential in encouraging them to revisit that aesthetic as the Mid-Century obsession was just starting.” Now you can’t go to a hipster coffee bar or new hotel without seeing G Plan, Eames and Arne Jacobsen chairs and sideboards, but Howell was an early adopter.

“Mid-Century seems a little more friendly and domestic with all the wood and ply, rather than, say, leather and chrome,” says Howell. “It’s the pared-down aesthetic that I like: the lightness, timelessness and minimalism.”

Again, she could be talking about her clothes and accessories. There are numerous reasons Howell’s customers are so loyal – the androgynous look, the roomy, nonchalant cuts that suit people of all ages and sizes – but one of the most appealing is their classicism. They are the epitome of investment shopping. Howell’s theory is that “classic clothes – a Barbour is a good example – are often clothes that arise from a need, that are made for a purpose”. With a nostalgic look in her eyes, she says she “aspires to a Burberry mac, it goes back to a mac my dad used to garden in, and a memory of it hanging in the shed. That pale khaki gabardine and the way it wears down.” She loves heritage fabrics and works with Harris Tweed, Irish linen and Mackintosh’s oiled cottons. “If you start with a good linen or cotton it wears in an attractive way, whereas other things just wear out or go dull.”

Howell has taken inspiration from what artists wear, and also from the style of her fellow students when she studied fine art at Goldsmiths in the late 1960s. She describes the look that struck a chord with her as “workwear, leading a life where you are working and active and you can’t be precious about things. A tough pair of cotton trousers can look so good. When I started, I would get inspiration from old photos of workmen, artists like Barbara Hepworth, Giacometti, and students of the Bauhaus.” Look at images from the German art school in the 1920s, and the students could almost be wearing Margaret Howell’s AW18 collection. Think jumpers with a home-knitted look, schoolgirl-like knee-length skirts, neat white blouses, and loose tweedy tailoring and berets for men.

In 2015, Howell worked with Tate to make a capsule collection of clothes inspired by Hepworth, including a duffel coat and pebble-print scarf, to mark a retrospective of the late sculptor’s work. Impressed by Hepworth’s elemental look, she says, “I based a windcheater on a style that she would wear with the sleeves pushed up and a chunky necklace.” Howell was the guest designer for the Tate Edit shop at Tate Modern this spring. Her selection included items by Robert Welch and Ercol, Japanese glassware, and Margaret Howell clothing.

As well as Tate, Howell has a penchant for smaller galleries. At the Dulwich Picture Gallery she discovered under-appreciated British artist Winifred Knights, best known for her apocalyptic 1920 painting The Deluge, and at Pallant House Gallery in Sussex she saw “a lovely painting of a vase of flowers by Evelyn Dunbar”. The Fry Gallery in Saffron Walden, which holds work by Edward Bawden and Tirzah Garwood, is another favourite.

While the brand keeps her too busy for any grand personal art projects, Howell finds incidental ways to express her creativity. When she walks along the beach in Suffolk (where she has a Modernist house by Swiss architect Rudy Mock), she picks up “bits of wood that have washed up in different colours or textures” and has “great fun making a little construction, then placing them in the fireplace against a white wall. I think I could possibly use them in a rug design or a painting.”

Howell fans know that with simple clothes, the smallest details – from the pocket placement on a workwear jacket to the width of a skirt pleat – really matter. There’s no hiding an unflattering cut with elaborate patterns, and her talent is to ensure they are satisfyingly just so. “Certain styles carry on for a long time with tweaks: perhaps I feel that a collar needs enlarging, or the fit needs to be looser,” she says. “Sometimes I think, ‘Oh, I’m getting older’, but there’s still an intuitive recognition of when something looks right.”