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Matching style with Ethics - the Queen of the Green Carpet - Livia Firth

Greta Jonyniate | 06.12.11

A true ambassador for green style, Livia Firth is in a position to prove that women can still be fashionable and socially responsible. Two years ago she embraced the inspiring "Green Carpet Challenge" and stated that she would wear only clothes designed by ethical companies.

Livia has also recently announced a new phase of her challenge: now she's pushing others into it. She is helping to pair 10 "top luxury designers" with 10 celebrities. Stella McCartney, Gucci, Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen and Alberta Ferretti are already on board.

You can read Viv Groskop’s article from The Guardian below.

From red carpet to green catwalk: the woman matching style with ethics

Standing in the spotlight alongside her movie star husband, Livia Firth rejects big labels to wear reclaimed fabrics. Now she's turning her hand to design

Livia Firth in a mud-dyed silk dress by Les Racines Du Ciel at Katrina Phillips. Photograph: Will Whipple for the Observer

She is seen as the world's most glamorous champion of "eco style" and has been dubbed "the queen of the green carpet". Now Livia Firth is moving into design: last week she revealed she is working on a line for the online retailer Yoox's eco brand Yooxygen, in partnership with Reclaim To Wear, which helps designers recycle textile surplus and waste.

Upcycling – or remaking cast-off items into something different and better – is something of a Firth speciality. She first drew attention to Reclaim to Wear when she wore one of its 1950s strapless cocktail dresses in silver satin to the Venice film festival. For the Paris premiere of The King's Speech, starring her husband Colin Firth, she famously wore an outfit made of one of his old suits.

When Livia wears something, she does it with flair: when her husband hosted the Met Ball in New York this year – one of US fashion's biggest nights – she worked with Stella McCartney on a silk all-in-one jumpsuit covered in reclaimed vintage beads for the occasion, with a detachable skirt made of hemp.

The consort of an Oscar-winner has to work doubly hard to earn the adulation his or her partner commands; one of the first reviews of her eco store in west London wondered whether she was "just another bored housewife who wants to 'dabble' in fairtrade fashion, bankrolled by her super-famous husband". But in a world where she could easily be made to sound like a character from Absolutely Fabulous, Firth, 42, has forged a reputation as a supporter of eco causes who demands to be taken seriously.

Red-carpet spouses are usually regarded with contempt by the fashion press and keenly scrutinised for supposedly idiotic "civilian" style mistakes. "Not enough celebrities take an interest," says Safia Minney, founder of People Tree, one of the UK's most successful designer eco labels. "But the clever ones do. Livia is intelligent and a truly gorgeous person inside and out. She's beautiful, Italian, with great taste... How could she go wrong?"

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