Photo: Davidlohr BuesoGreen-minded folks in the know about celebrity stuff — i.e. not me — have been on tenterhooks waiting to see what Colin Firth’s wife Livia would wear to the Oscars. That’s because she’s attempting the Green Carpet Challenge again this year, and has sworn to wear nothing on the red carpet that isn’t repurposed, upcycled, or made of sustainable fabric.
At an over-the-top expensive event like the Oscars, full of starlets in single-use dresses clutching goodie bags filled with gadgets and travel vouchers, that seems like kind of a drop in a million-dollar bucket. But in terms of putting your money where your mouth is, it beats a color-coded ribbon any day.
The prize for “most supporting dresses” goes to … : At the Oscars, you have to go big — you can’t get away with a simple milk protein shift like Livia Firth wore for the SAG awards. This time, she ended up going with a dress cobbled together out of bits from 11 different vintage dresses. Every part of the dress, including the fastenings, was recycled. Plus, all the original dresses were from the 1930s, the era of Best Picture-winning flick The King’s Speech (which Colin Firth also won Best Actor for, by the way, for those of you who like me were watching Annie Hall last night instead.)
That sounds potentially like a Frankendress horror — maybe something more like what Helena Bonham Carter would wear — but designer Gary Harvey evidently knew what he was doing. We’re probably not legally allowed to reprint a photo here, but you can click here to see that it was quite pretty.
Mixed greens: What’s cool about Livia’s approach to the Green Carpet Challenge is that she’s not phoning it in, wearing some kind of greenwashed 1-percent-consumer-waste dress to every awards show. She’s been trying a bunch of different approaches, from a repurposed wedding gown to a dress made of her husband’s ruined suit.
It may not do much to make the gold guy greener — pretty much if you wanted to reduce the impact of the Oscars, the best approach would be not holding the Oscars. But it does demonstrate that green fashion can be creative and whimsical, which is a lot more fun than watching James Franco try to talk.
Meanwhile, if Madam Firth is looking to outfit her next appearance, the Project Runway archives have some ideas for her. Plastic cup dress, anyone?
