Lily Cole has never found modelling particularly “challenging”. The 36-year-old model was scouted when she was just 14 years old and though she was one of the most high-profile fashion figures of the early 2000s, the flame-haired beauty insisted it wasn’t something she was passionate about. She told Grazia magazine: “I never followed fashion, it just seemed to follow me.
“The act of modelling is not the most challenging work. I always have a good book with me.” Lily made a surprise appearance at Burberry’s A/W 24 runway show in February and explained she was “charmed” by the fashion house’s offer to consider her personal ethics in her outfit.
She explained: “I did it because they offered to make me vegan leather boots so I was quite charmed by that. “And they send me the work they do on sustainability. They still have a long way to go, but they are trying.
“It does feel like a past life.” Lily’s environmental activism is at the heart of her work these days and she admitted her passion helped her forge a bond with the late Vivienne Westwood, who she attended the 2013 Met Gala with. She said: “We always got on.
All of our conversations were about the environment and different social issues, I don’t think we ever talked about fashion. “She got really into Taoism at the end of her life and it would say you have a body that exists after death and you still exist in the influence you have. “I feel like Vivienne has a vast continuation body – .