What do the cream of the fashion design world's crop and sustainability have in common? For most award shows, the answer would be a resounding "nothing," but this year, Colin Firth's wife, Livia is working with the fashion world's biggest names to change that.
For the third annual year, Firth is holding the Green Carpet Campaign, an attempt to give eco-friendly fashion a chance to shine under some of the biggest spotlights in the world: the red carpets she walks alongside her actor husband. She's signed on huge names like Tom Ford, Chanel, Giorgio Armani, Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Stella McCartney to design green dresses for her for the various awards shows, all of which will be shown on Vogue UK's blog. Firth kicked it off at the Globes with an Armani dress composed of material made from water bottles.
The movement of eco-fashion from the sidelines to mainstream is gaining steam. As Italian Vogue editor Franca Sozzani put it on her blog, "The respect and care for the environment, sustainability and fair trade nowadays are features that cannot be separated from the fashion world, or at least, from those who wish to preserve also the ethic, and not just aesthetic, side of fashion."
In other respects, however, the Globes was a disappointment to environmental activists. After a much-touted local menu last year, this year the dishes included expensive options flown in from all around the world. As the Daily Mail reported about the dessert of chocolate almond crunch terrine decorated with 24k gold:
In addition to high visible costs that will garnish the dish, what the diners may or may not catch is that the chocolate will be flown in from Switzerland, the acacia honey caramel will arrive from France, the Tarragon hazelnuts from Italy, and the Valencia almond paste from Spain.
The "Global Food Harmony" menu drew ire from the Global Green U.S.A., which noted in a statement that flying in ingredients from around the world is "unsustainable and only adds to growing greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming."