Why Lily Cole’s now a model on a mission
IT WAS WHILE she was still a teenage model, posing on shoots and walking down catwalks, that Lily Cole first began to ponder the ethics of the fur she was dressed in, and where the diamonds around her neck came from. Instead of staying silent, Lily asked questions. She lost work in the process, but instead chose to work with brands that she felt sought to make a difference.
Now, instead of asking questions, she’s trying to provide answers. Written from a shed in the garden of her home in the Kent countryside – ‘it’s very Virginia Woolf ’, she says over the phone – Lily’s just-released book Who Cares Wins aims to shed light on a broad range of issues such as sustainability, technology and gender inequality. Bringing together insights from extensive research and interviews with people including Elon Musk and Stella Mccartney, it’s the culmination of a journey that began when she was scouted outside a Soho burger bar at the age of 14.
‘Models are a really mixed group of people,’ Lily, now 32, explains. ‘Unlike most jobs, where people who gravitate towards them have a shared impulse or instinct that attracts them to it, you don’t choose to model. You are chosen, just by genetic fluke. So what you end up with is a very diverse group of experiences, interests and skill sets. But I think I was always quite geeky and curious about lots of things. I had a strong social conscience from a young age, so that ended up playing into the work I was doing in fashion.’
Among the many experts Lily cites in the book is Livia Firth, founder of Eco Age, whose main ethos is, simply, to buy less. Have we been brainwashed into consuming too much? ‘I don’t think it’s some evil conspiracy by a group of people,’ says Lily. ‘But the model of capitalism – that in order for a company to be financially sustainable, they need to keep selling more – that structure insists that we buy more than we need.’
It does not exactly feel like a time of hope. The strict lockdown of spring has transitioned into a slightly more relaxed summer, but the world has changed exponentially. Lily believes this might be the perfect time to create real difference. ‘You know, without wanting to prophecise in any way, I’m actually quite optimistic,’ Lily says. ‘That Covid-19 is allowing outlying ideas like universal basic income and green new deals to suddenly feel within reach.’
Lily is now a mother to five-year-old Wylde with her partner Kwame Ferreira, so where does parenthood sit with the fight against climate change? Only last year, the Duke of Sussex vowed to stop at two children in an attempt to do his bit to preserve natural resources. ‘I’m not a huge fan of making people feel guilty about wanting to have children,’ Lily says. ‘For every man or woman who wants to have four children, there’s usually another person who wants to have none, right? Enabling more people to have choice is more important than removing it.’
Lily has already tried out acting, appearing in St Trinian’s and The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnussus in the Noughties, but would she give politics a go? She points out in the book that women leaders are statistically more likely to enact major environmental change via new policies. But, at least for now, she has no such ambitions.
‘That would be a massive sacrifice in my life,’ she points out. ‘Whatever you do, you’re going to be hated by a large proportion of the population.’ She pauses. ‘But I never rule out anything in life.’ Put her down as a maybe, then.
‘Who Cares Wins’ is available from 30 July