The Londoner: Livia Firth: eco-fashion is tailored to the post-Covid world

In today's Diary: Livia Firth on the "opportunities" of coronavirus / Former PR blames early start for Ivana Trump furore / Boris Johnson effigies outside restaurant / Bernardine Evaristo calls for new canons
Dave Benett
2 October 2020

Livia FIRTH says “the phoenix starts again from the ashes” as she believes “the opportunities that Covid is presenting us with” mean that sustainable fashion has a future.

The film producer and ex-wife of actor Colin Firth told the Londoner: “It showcased more than ever how unsustainable the fast fashion business model is,” referring to the pandemic.

Firth added: “Financially fashion is being destroyed by Covid, it has taken a huge hit”.

She was speaking ahead of this year’s Green Carpet Fashion Awards which are taking place digitally later this month and will feature holograms and videos, “like Minority Report”, she said. Firth, who has been a fierce campaigner against fast fashion — inexpensive clothing produced by retailers such as Boohoo — said she though Covid would change people’s perspectives.

“Coming out of that lockdown ... our primary instinct has been more like, ‘I want to see my friends,’ rather than, ‘I want to go shopping,’ so hopefully this will stay,” she said.

Firth said for her own lockdown she’d been lucky to spend it near Tuscany on a farm, where she also mastered Zoom, which, she added, “for me, was a huge achievement.”

Next step: changing fashion.

Poor Boris left dangling again in Mayfair

Artist Antony Haylock exclaims “as strange requests go, this was up there”. He made two life-size models of Boris Johnson when he was caught on a zipwire, waving Union Jacks. The effigies have been put up outside Richard Caring’s 34 Mayfair restaurant. Diners beware.

Bernadine fires her cannon at the canon

Getty Images

Bernardine Evaristo has called for “canons, plural” as she decried academics who present students with “a limited palette of writers who are mostly white and writing whiteness”. Evaristo, giving the Goldsmiths Prize lecture, said “decolonising the curriculum” was still important. Broadside.

Ivana isn’t a morning person, says her PR

Loose Women

AFTER Ivana Trump’s comment on Loose Women last month that immigrants “rape and steal” led to 78 complaints to Ofcom, her representative Liz Brewer tells us it was “a bit early for her”. She explained to The Londoner: “It was four in the morning for her with hair and make up.” She added she planned to have “a very diplomatic word. She has been isolated and that doesn’t do anybody any good.” Something a little stronger than “diplomatic” would be better.

SW1A

Rahil Ahmad

Activist Dolly Theis says her Second Hand September campaign with MPs and peers was so successful she’s planning to do it in October too, though she admits “it doesn’t have quite the same ring to it”. She told us MPs “leapt” at the chance to show off their thrifty glad-rags around Westminster. Many told her they’d never before bought second-hand things. There’s a first time for everything.

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JEREMY HUNT earlier this week pictured himself with his children at Go Ape, a treetop adventure park. So did he get up there himself? An aide tells us the former foreign secretary didn’t this time but joined them last year when it “knackered him out” and “made him realise sadly he’s the wrong side of 50”. Chin up, Jeremy, politicians are naturals on the high wires...

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