‘Have you ever done plant medicine?” Lily Cole, supermodel, actress and eco-activist, inquires over quinoa salad. I feel a little square admitting that I have not, but ayahuasca, administered by a female shaman, among an indigenous community, is part of Cole’s process. “I’ve taken it over the years,” she says. “It has definitely informed how I think, how I see the world. I took it as a personal journey, but for me the personal is political.”
We are sitting in the Chiltern Firehouse’s garden one sunny lunchtime in May. Cole, 33, is famous for her otherworldly beauty, which led to her being scouted at 14, appearing on the cover of British Vogue aged 16, walking for Alexander McQueen, Louis Vuitton and Chanel and being worth £4 million by the age of 26. Her trademark cascades of russet hair are now shoulder length with an undercut, she is wearing an oversized white shirtdress of forgotten provenance, trainers by eco-conscious brand Veja and a jumper by Sheep Inc (tagline: “the world’s first carbon negative knitwear”). Her nails are polished red with trails of gold glitter and there are squiggly micro tattoos on her hands, including a W for her five-year-old daughter, Wylde. “I am not going to tell you what the others mean,” she says, self-possessed and a little forbidding, but not unfriendly, with a gawky laugh and a sense of suppressed mischief.
We are here to talk about the paperback publication of her book, Who Cares Wins, an intellectually rigorous treatise on the ways we have had an impact on our planet and solutions for the damage that has been done. “I feel like there is such an overwhelming amount of negative information about the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis,” she says. “If we only focus on the challenges I don’t think that helps us solve the issues. I have loads of reasons for optimism.” These have been gleaned via interviews with scientists and tech pioneers, as well as hanging out with the aforementioned indigenous tribe, learning about different ways of interacting with the land, which she has integrated into her own life.
Cole, her partner Kwame Ferreira (who was born in Angola, brought up in Brazil and Portugal, studied design and describes himself as a “problem solver”) and their daughter have been living in Portugal for the past year, a move made on a pandemic whim, but one that has become a permanent choice. They try to live sustainably with their solar panels and electric car, eating mostly vegan food (although Wylde is allowed the odd chicken drumstick). “Every day is full of imperfect choices. And that was what I was really trying to get across in the book — that it is much better that we have billions of people trying to do this imperfectly, because that will push the market forces in the right direction. If we beat ourselves up and strive for perfect then we are probably just going to fall back and do nothing.”
Cole’s self-confessed eco-fails include hot baths and crisps. But she is stringent about wastefulness, inspired partly by her childhood, which was not one of plenty. Cole was born in Devon, her parents separating when she was seven weeks old. Cole’s mother, Patience Owen, an artist and writer, took her and her elder sister, Elvie, to London. Owen brought up her girls alone, which was a struggle, not least because she suffers from a genetic condition that impairs her mobility. “She is an extraordinary woman,” Cole says. “It still baffles me now how, with no money, disabled and a single parent, she managed to get an apartment in London with a garden and to bring her girls up.”
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Owen’s artworks filled the basement flat. “My mum was and is so creative and she encouraged that in us. My older sister and I would make dances and plays. There was a real magic, and at the same time it was also quite difficult because we had a very sick mum and so me and my sister took on quite adult responsibilities at quite a young age.” This included doing the family shop. “I have memories of being stopped in the local supermarket by strangers asking if I needed help because I must have looked so young to be shopping by myself. At the time it was surreal that people were offering me help, but now I look back and I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, that probably did look quite strange.’”
Cole went on to attend St Marylebone, an all-girls comprehensive secondary school that specialises in performing arts. Fashion was not really part of her life; her mother wore clothes that she had made herself, just as her mother had done. But once people began mentioning the possibility of modelling, it became an aspiration, offering a chance to escape. “I had been on a plane only once before I became a model, so suddenly the idea that I could have a job that would take me around the world, that was a dream.”
Change came quickly, Cole’s features fitting the aesthetic of the time, and within a year she was routinely flying to New York and Los Angeles for work. She was just 15, plunged into this extraordinary world with its muddy sexual politics. I ask what that was like, if she ever felt in danger. “I have mixed feelings. On the one hand I feel that fashion is one of the only industries where women are more empowered than men — female models are paid more than male models, the consumers are predominantly female, it is a very female-centric industry. And so, in a strange way, I felt very empowered. Also, being in this trio of women growing up, it took me a long time to realise what a big issue gender and inequality is. I was also successful from a young age, which affects your experience. That being said, yes, there were photographers who were inappropriate. I didn’t really understand that or recognise that at the time, and I can recognise that now.” She remembers one of the first castings she went to. “The casting director commented on me having puppy fat. My mum was mortified. How can a grown man say that to a 14-year-old girl? It is so irresponsible. But I think that has been changing, and now we have much more diversity.”
Diversity is a key theme for Cole: in her book she describes herself as “queer”. “I like that word because of its openness, because I think all those boundaries are quite rigid. I have lots of friends who identify as bisexual, lesbian or whatever, who also identify as queer. I’ve always been quite private about my private life, consciously, and I want to continue to be, so I don’t feel the need to be explicit. At the same time I feel the need to acknowledge that I am not straight.”
This approach feeds through into her work, with all its multiplicity. Cole put modelling on hold to do a degree in art history at Cambridge; she acts, notably in Terry Gilliam’s film The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus; she has started businesses, including Impossible, a skill-sharing mobile app and platform that she launched in 2013 (she met Ferreira while setting it up). She co-owns a zero-waste sunglasses business and a bookshop and hosts a podcast. There have been forays to Davos and friendships with other serious-minded people such as Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales and Chelsea Clinton. There were even rumours that she was dating Twitter founder Jack Dorsey in 2013.
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In 2018 she was the creative partner at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, for which she created and directed a short film, Balls. It explored motherhood and poverty in a modern-day setting as a response to Heathcliff’s background as a foundling. She relished this opportunity to explore her creativity, and directing and writing is where she wants to focus her considerable energies now. “This year I have started the process of writing a story. I don’t know whether it will be a book or a screenplay, so I am doing both.” She won’t divulge too many details, other than that the work is fiction. “It’s informed by a lot of the thinking that went into my book, but I am taking an approach that might be more comedic, less heavy.” This is perhaps a surprising new direction for Cole, but one that she is as committed to as she is everything else. “I am trying to embrace a non-serious phase of my life,” she insists. “I am actively embracing my inner joker.”
Who Cares Wins: How to Protect the Planet You Love by Lily Cole is published in paperback by Penguin Life at £9.99
Styling: Cathy Kasterine. Hair: Soichi Inagaki at Art Partner using Bumble and Bumble. Make-up: Georgina Graham at Management Artists using RMS Beauty. Model: Lily Cole at IMG Models. Local production: Lucy Watson Productions
