LIVIA FIRTH MEANS BUSINESS
LIVIA FIRTH – YES, WIFE OF COLIN – WAS CAMPAIGNING FOR SUSTAINABILITY LONG BEFORE IT BECAME A THING. BUT AS BOTH BRANDS AND CONSUMERS WANT TO BE MORE ECO FRIENDLY, SHE’S STEPPING UP HER INFLUENCE – FROM BUCKINGHAM PALACE TO THE RED CARPET – AND EVEN WANTS A PIECE OF KIM KARDASHIAN WEST’S INSTAGRAM FEED
THE ONE THING THAT COULD POTENTIALLY HALT THE DESTRUCTIVE EFFECTS OF FAST FASHION? “Imagine if Kim Kardashian started a campaign for ethical and sustainable fashion; we would change the world!”
So proclaims Livia Firth, from a bright, gardenfacing meeting room at Eco Age, the London-based sustainability consultancy she founded in 2008. If Kim I-can-break-the-internet Kardashian West were to start posting ethical missives to her 112 millionstrong social media following, says Firth, it’ll be game over for climate change. “We’re done, we can close the company, finish! We go home!” says Firth, hints of her native Italian accent coming through. “But unfortunately, we [still] have to start, so that’s my mission this year – to get the big influencers on social media to start campaigning about these issues.”
If the force and success of Firth’s past missions are anything to go by, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility. The way Firth talks about sustainability is both humanising and enlightening. She is realistic about the challenges faced by the fashion industry, yet hugely ambitious in her outlook as Eco Age’s creative director. This year, she’s visited the European Parliament to look into trade
regulation, and Buckingham Palace for The Commonwealth Fashion Exchange, a new ethical programme connecting designers with artisan producers, launched in partnership with Eco Age.
And it’s not just a certain Kardashian she has her sights set on. The Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, whom Firth says is “very into textiles”, hosted the party for The Commonwealth Fashion Exchange, also attended by Stella Mccartney and Naomi Campbell. “In spite of herself, the Duchess of Cambridge has become a fashion icon. Every time she steps out, everyone is interested. It’s very important that she starts becoming involved [in sustainable causes] because that will ripple,” Firth says.
But the ripples have already started, and Firth, with her unwavering dedication to social and environmental justice, has been a driving force: “Sustainability is a real conversation now. When I hear people talking about it I think ‘Great! Thank God!’,” she says, clapping her hands together and throwing her head back. According to Firth, there are multiple reasons why both brands and consumers are starting to pay more attention to sustainability. “I want to think that a lot of the work that we have done to put ethical fashion front of stage at glamorous events – the Met Gala and the Oscars – started to change people’s perception, because the red carpet is one of the biggest communication platforms in the world,” she says.
Firth may have been the first person to accept the Green Carpet Challenge in 2013, when she wore only ethical, sustainable dresses during awards season, but several Hollywood stars have followed. “Emma Watson did that whole press storm with Beauty And The Beast wearing only ethical fashion. And because she has such a huge platform on social media, that created a big movement,” says Firth. Gisele Bündchen, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong’o, and of course her husband, Colin Firth, have all taken on the Green Carpet Challenge, too, wearing designers such as Stella Mccartney, Calvin Klein Collection and Tom Ford.
But alongside a growing visibility, there has also been a shift within the conversation: “The stories of the people who make the clothes are becoming really prominent now.” It’s these stories, and the connections consumers are making with the human cost of clothes, that Firth says are so powerful. They’re also one of the main principles of Eco Age, which helps clients, including Matches Fashion and Gucci, find sustainable ways of working, whether in their supply chain or corporate strategy. “At Eco Age, the environmental justice goes hand in hand with the social justice,” she says.
Talking to Firth, one thing soon becomes clear, and that’s how fast fashion, the impulse to buy, buy, buy fuelled by brands producing more collections than ever, has tipped the industry’s ecosystem out of kilter. “The whole fast fashion business model is predicated on the exploitation of labour. As a result, the environmental damage of fashion has become monumental; piles and piles of textiles in landfills, microplastics, all the polyester, it’s all connected. But it’s the human factor that you have to redress – that’s how you put the balance back in.”
And just as mindfulness is a 21st-century buzzword, Firth thinks it could also be applied to shopping. “This is why we created the ‘30 Wears’ campaign,” she says. “It’s all about going shopping whenever you want, but when you find something, ask yourself, ‘I like it, but will I wear it a minimum of 30 times?’ If the answer is yes, buy it. But you’ll be surprised how many times you say, ‘No actually, I wanted to buy it for that party on Saturday,’ so then you put it back. At that point, you are part of the solution. You are not a mindless consumer anymore, you are an active citizen who makes a choice.”
In the 2015 documentary The True Cost, on which Firth worked as an executive producer, the final scenes show swarms of shoppers rushing into stores on Black Friday, interspersed with footage of Bangladeshi women in garment factories, who are responsible for making so many of our clothes. It’s a very powerful end to the film, so it’s not surprising to hear that it was a visit in 2008 to a garment factory in Bangladesh, in her role as an Oxfam Global Ambassador, that transformed Firth. The working conditions shocked and appalled her. “I’ve become a total campaigner because once I met those women, I couldn’t pretend I’d never met them and that they didn’t tell me those things, and that I’d never witnessed how they’re working,” she says wistfully.
But Firth also attributes her attitude to fashion and sustainability to the way she was brought up. “I grew up without fast fashion and without fast food, these things didn’t exist when I was a teenager or in my early twenties. I was living in Italy, which was then still a very traditional country, so for me, fashion has always been about saving money to buy the things that I wanted.” She remembers squirrelling money away in an envelope each month to buy a Max Mara camel coat, her first big splurge (yes, she still
“YOU ARE ONE PART OF A LOT OF HANDS AT WORK”
has it). “I also still have my Converse All Star sneakers from when I was 18!” she laughs. And of course now, if Firth needs something new, she tends to shop from brands that she knows are sustainable.
Right now, Firth is focusing on Eco Age’s future. “The short-term goals are about delivering as a consultancy to all our clients,” says Firth. “For the long term, it’s about trying to shift the conversation even further.” She’s also keen to develop the work that Eco Age does on a policy level, especially concerning the living wage in countries that rely on the garment trade, such as Bangladesh and Cambodia. “We want to make companies accountable for what they do. Today, accountability is very much the word.”
She is also vehement about the way feminism plays into the question of sustainability. “When you look at the #Metoo campaign now and the concept of feminism, you think, ‘How can we just be feminist in our little world?’ When you are a feminist you have to consider women all over the world. You have to remember that every day that you dress, you are wearing the story of another woman who gets exploited. So, if you are a true feminist, the #Metoo has to apply to them too.”
As passionate as Firth is, there have been times she has wondered if anything she does can make a difference. When I ask what she’d say to someone who doesn’t believe in climate change, she replies matter-of-factly. “I wouldn’t bother. I think that if you are a non-believer in climate change today, you are so ignorant that I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
I rephrase the question and ask what she’d say to someone at a dinner party who wanted to do more. “You have to be as mindful as possible and remember this concept of interdependence – we are all connected. You don’t live in a silo. Every day you get dressed, it’s because someone else is sewing your clothes. Every day you eat because someone else has grown your food. When you use your phone, someone else has assembled it. Remember that you are one part of a lot of hands at work, and you have to be mindful of that, then everything will fall into place.”
Her response is both realistic and hopeful, and I can imagine her saying it in a dinner party setting. Let’s just hope her next guest is Kim Kardashian.
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