Photo Credit: Eco-Age
IN HONOR OF EARTH DAY (APRIL 22) WE SAT DOWN WITH LIVIA FIRTH, MBE, THE FOUNDER OF THE GREEN CARPET Fashion Awards, a sustainable ceremony uniting the power of fashion and entertainment for positive transformation, which returned for its second annual event during Oscar week. Championing interconnected cultural change and the most inspiring efforts that drive it, the GCFA, and its recent initiative, the Green Carpet Challenge, celebrates people and organizations that are crucial to collective transformation. This year’s event was co-chaired by some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Cate Blanchett, Julianne Moore, Zendaya, Annie Lennox, and Helen Hunt, as well as Quannah Chasinghorse, Minister of Indigenous People of Brazil Sônia Guajajara, and Ugandan climate justice activist Vanessa Nakate. We sat down with Firth to discuss how she’s making the world a better place, one fashionable footstep at a time.
Photo Credit: Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Green Carpet Fashion Awards
What made you start the Green Carpet Challenge and how has it evolved?
When I started it in 2010, it was out of the coming together of different factors: an opportunity — [estranged husband Colin Firth] being nominated for Tom Ford’s A Single Man movie and knowing that, throughout awards season, people would start focusing on what I was wearing; a realization — fashion has one of the biggest environmental and social impacts, and yet, no one thinks about that when they get dressed in the morning; and a fact — there is no bigger communication platform than the red carpet. The evolution has been almost directly proportionate with the amplification it wanted to have — from being just me, to challenging the designers, to involving the celebrities and the stylists, to getting the sustainable fashion conversation mainstream. From Green Carpet Challenge, we went into Green Carpet Fashion Awards and 14 years later, it is one of the biggest platforms to promote transformation in a positive way.
What is the overlying purpose of the challenge and awards? How do you specifically give back to the environment?
It’s about all of us understanding the connection that fashion has. As Dan McDougall (Amnesty Award-winning journalist and filmmaker) says, ‘“fashion is the only red line that runs through all our lives.” It represents one of the biggest connection points for hundreds of millions of people across our world. It’s like a chain reaction of individuals colliding with others and influencing their lives without realizing it. The GCFA puts together all these dots, it joins them, and hopefully, makes you look at the bigger picture and makes you want to participate in the change.
How did the Green Carpet Fashion Awards come to be, and how did you come up with the archetypes? Which women embodies each of these archetypes?
We needed to highlight archetypes that are needed in our society and with whom people can identify. It is not just about one kind of person, or one kind of job, or one kind of activist. We need healers, sages, rebels, and so on. In this spirit, I don’t think anyone represents all of them; you can be a healer without being a rebel or a visionary, you know? And some days, you can feel like a rebel and others, you can feel like a messenger. I think I am an agitator (my title at work is even chief agitator officer). There is no archetype for that, but you just gave me the idea of creating that for next year’s edition!
It isn’t easy being green… or is it? How do you implement being eco-friendly into your everyday routine at home?
What if we substituted the word “eco-friendly” with “respect”? This is what it is about — having respect for “other” — whether it is the planet or the people around you or who make things for you, produce your food, your clothes, your car, and so on. How difficult it is to have respect?
Why is giving back so important to you?
It is about what I receive every day, not what I give every day. When you have a relationship of co-dependence, or the famous “I am because you are,” then my health, my wealth, and my well-being depend on what I give back. It’s this symbiotic relationship, or solidarity, that makes a difference.
What is the greatest luxury in life and why?
Time. We do not have it anymore. We need to use it wisely if we want to save humanity. Earth will totally survive without us, and sometimes, I think may be even better.
