SERGIO ROSSI GOES GREEN: Sergio Rossi, together with Eco-Age, Livia Firth’s sustainability consultancy and Swarovski all joined forces Thursday to mark the launch of the Sergio Rossi Green Carpet Collection.
Guests including Firth and her actor husband Colin; Nadja Swarovski; Sergio Rossi’s design director Angelo Ruggeri and François-Henri Pinault, Kering’s chief executive officer and chairman, all gathered for a cocktail to mark the line at London rooftop venue Wellington Arch.
Livia Firth noted that it’s the third Green Carpet collaboration she’s worked on with Kering, following collections with Gucci on a bag and Stella McCartney on a sustainable ready-to-wear collection. In developing the latest designs — a clutch bag and a high-heeled sandal in organic silk, inspired by a butterfly’s wings — Firth travelled to Italy to ensure that every part of the process was sustainable, from “weaving and spinning [the silk to] dyeing the silk fiber,” said Firth. The silk — developed specifically for the collection — has now been branded with Firth’s GCC sustainability brand-mark. The designs are also dotted with Swarovski’s lead-free crystals.
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Ruggeri described creating the sustainable silk as “challenging,” as it involved adapting a fabric more commonly used in ready-to-wear fashion into shoes and bags. His inspiration for the designs also came from the idea of silk’s origins. “I tried to do a little bit of poetry and romanticism, because I said, butterfly is the evolution of the silkworm,” said Ruggeri. He described the shoe design as having “wings [that] embrace the ankle.”
The shoe and bag, which come in pale peach and black, launched Friday at Sergio Rossi’s e-commerce site and at the label’s stores. The shoe is priced at 850 pounds or $1,292 at current exchange, while the clutch bag is 895 pounds or $1,360.
And Firth has yet more collaborations on the go — during London Fashion Week, she’ll unveil a Green Carpet Collection with London designer Erdem Moralioglu. “I love [Moralioglu’s] personality, his approach to design, his ideas and the way his mind thinks ahead of a collection,” said Firth of the duo’s working process.