Cameron Diaz joins Livia Firth’s Green Carpet Challenge in Stella McCartney’s eco dress.
It’s great to see Cameron Diaz looking stunning in her eco-friendly Stella McCartney dress at the Met Ball on Monday night. Created as part of Livia Firth’s ongoing green carpet challenge, the low-backed column dress was made of Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS)-certified silk and dramatically embellished with ethically sourced beading. All that sparkle didn’t come easy according to Firth, writing on her blog, “Stella added thousands of beautiful glass beads and crystal chain, which gave us a new challenge for the future as we work on traceability and sourcing embellished materials.”
Worn by a world famous actress on the red carpet of fashion’s biggest promotional event of the year, the dress, its designer and green credentials are destined for maximum exposure with the quick flash of a paparazzi’s camera. It’s the break an up-and-coming sustainable designer would give their eye teeth for.
The phenomenon of celebrity fashion promotion is not new, but there has been a huge resurgence of this trend in recent times and if you stop to consider the names we see actresses wearing, they form a small pool of oft-repeated brands. Like so many of our products under closer examination, you discover most of those brands are owned by huge conglomerates that have considerable resources and power to win those celebrity endorsements.
So when the news broke last month that one of those luxury fashion conglomerates, PPR (who own the Gucci Group, which includes Gucci, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Yves Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga amongst others) launched it’s Creative Sustainability Lab, the potential impact seems huge.
With a strategic, multi-faceted action plan over the next five years that includes a partnership with William McDonough’s Cradle to Cradle, 15 dedicated employees and an annual budget of more than $14 million; hopes for the initiative are high. Its ambitious goals include offsetting the entire organization’s carbon footprint for the year – more than 97,000 tons of carbon – and developing new processes and standards across the group’s luxury, sports, lifestyle and retail sectors.
According to PPR CEO, Francois-Henri Pinault, “PPR HOME will provide us with novel, more sustainable approaches to contribute to a better world for the long run.“