First of all, there are her striking looks. Photographers from Craig McDean to Tim Walker have made the most of Cole’s red hair, porcelain skin, tiny rosebud mouth and almost completely round face by casting her as lost princesses and otherworldly beings.
Then, there is her intelligence – Cole graduated in 2011 with a double first in history of art from King’s College, Cambridge. She also gave a remarkably accomplished turn in Terry Gilliam’s film, The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus, opposite Heath Ledger.
And finally, there is her commitment to a host of ethical campaigns. Whereas many figures in fashion dabble amiably around the edges of good causes, Cole plunges straight into their hearts. Children’s charity Global Angels, WaterAid, Environmental Justice Foundation, Comic Relief: all have benefited from Cole’s support. Her knitwear brand, The North Circular, celebrates the handmade and home-grown by commissioning grannies to knit socks.
Today, in her latest venture, Cole launches a collection of jewellery created with Sky Rainforest Rescue, an initiative between Sky and WWF to help save a billion trees in the Amazon rainforest. She visited wild rubber plantations in the Sky Rainforest Rescue project in Acre, north-west Brazil, to see the rubber tapped from the trees and treated.
Lily Cole meeting families while on her travels in Brazil (Picture: Sky Rainforest Rescue)
‘The rubber ends up in big sheets of different colours, hung out like washing linen,’ she says. ‘I looked into embroidering it, I looked into putting lace into it and creating different textures, I looked at carving it but, in the end, all I had were these one-millimetre thick sheets of rubber, so I ended up doing things very simply.’
The results are square pendants, earrings, bracelets and rings, pure of line and true to form, contrasting the soft earthy colours of the rubber against a bronze sheen. A material we normally regard as tough and utilitarian suddenly becomes something very lovely.
‘The delicacy is important to how they’re handled,’ says Cole. ‘I think it’s nice for people to be more thoughtful about objects and to care about them.’ Creating, she says, came easy. ‘I’m always making things,’ she laughs.
What most attracted her to the project was the concept of using trade as a means of helping solve some of the world’s inequities. Acre was once a centre of rubber production but, having been overtaken by cheaper, non-sustainable synthetic and plantation rubber, many of its communities started to cut down trees to grow crops and raise livestock instead.
Cole’s project aims to raise awareness of the viability of Amazonian wild rubber, which would give local communities an alternative. ‘Visiting the rubber tappers inspired me,’ she says. ‘I wanted to find a way to bring their story to Britain.
The jewellery is just one example of how wild rubber can be used. One of the reasons I joined this campaign was to explore the rubber industry as a vehicle for green economics, which, if scaled up, I see as offering real hope to the rainforest.
Picks from Lily Cole’s jewellery collection (Picture: Sky Rainforest Rescue)
‘If, in the future, the value of wild rubber can exceed what can be made from the products that cause deforestation, then there is the real potential for a sustainable green economy.’ To protect the environment, she says, you need to work first with its people.
Cole dates the first awareness of her love of nature to a trip to northern Japan as a 16-year-old. ‘I’d grown up in London, very urban, and suddenly, I was in these extraordinary mountains, with these extraordinary trees,’ she says. ‘It made me see the world differently.’
The social awareness has always been there. ‘I’ve always cared about issues, always thought through problems. I don’t know how much that comes from my personality or my mum,’ she says.
Fashion has a reputation for being an infernal cycle of luxury and consumption – surely the very antithesis of Cole’s ideals? She disagrees. ‘A lot of the learning I’ve done to get to this way of thinking has come through my work in fashion,’ she says. ‘Modelling, fashion and film have all encouraged me to learn more about issues and to feel empowered enough to do something about them,’ she says.
‘Production chains, how consumers can drive change: all these things may seem at odds with fashion but arguably, they’re not.’
She does still model, although not to the same extent. The last shoot she did was for American Vogue in March. In Going To Pieces, photographer Alex Prager portrayed Cole as a disintegrating 1950s housewife, staring into space, lying on sun loungers.
‘If it’s a great photographer or magazine, I’ll get involved,’ she says. ‘I love working with artists, filmmakers, photographers, designers. I still think of it as a very valuable experience.’
Her next project is Impossible, a social networking site where participants share favours with their local communities. It has very little to do with fashion but it is very Lily Cole. The world’s most glamorous campaigner has only got started…
Lily Cole’s jewellery for Sky Rainforest Rescue launches at www.stylistpick.com today. Rings from £10 and £25 for pendants. All profits go to the rainforest. www.sky.com/rainforestrescue
