“We call it ‘wardrobe surgery’ — people bring us their treasured possessions that have been ruined or gone out of fashion and we rework them into something wearable.”
Sanders is impressed with Firth’s approach. “She has great vision. She knows what suits her. And she looks great in anything,” she says.
“Yes, she is a lucky cow in that way,” says Siegle. “She’s got that bone structure and she’s sickeningly good-looking. But she’s not a glossy, groomed type. She attaches very little importance to that kind of thing. I don’t dread going to meet her because I’ve got bitten nails.”
It’s this combination of natural, unforced glamour and integrity that seems to have captured the fashion world’s imagination. “I think people are really sick of seeing people who are surgically enhanced and look a certain, unattainable way. She’s a positive fashion role model — and in many ways an accidental one.”
Firth recently said how hilarious she found it when, while talking to the singer Annie Lennox, a renowned feminist, Lennox apologized for referring to her as “Colin Firth’s wife.” She laughed and replied: “What is the problem? I don’t care. Why does being a feminist mean you can’t be someone’s wife?”
After all her advances in “green fashion,” her new design role at Yoox should finally see her recognized as a force in her own right. Or perhaps, given her spouse, that’s impossible: her most recent interview ran under the superfluously worded headline: “Livia Firth on living with husband Colin Firth.”
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