A Lightness of Being—Hamish Bowles on Creative Directing the 2018 Green Carpet Fashion Awards

​A Lightness of Being—Hamish Bowles on Creative Directing the 2018 Green Carpet Fashion Awards​

There’s plenty of fashion action taking place off the runways in Milan this season. A beautiful “intervention,” for example, is being staged by Livia Firth’s Eco-Age with the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, Ministero dello Sviluppo Economico, the Italian Trade Agency, and the Comune di Milano, in the Piazza della Scala in advance of the Green Carpet Fashion Awards, celebrating sustainability in Italian fashion. The fact that Vogue’s Hamish Bowles has been named creative director of this year’s festivities might explain why the garden installed there displays the free-form beauty characteristic of English landscape design.

The tiny hummingbird had already been decided as the motif for the gala when the peripatetic editor signed on to the project, and he dove right into his research, deciding to focus on artwork that reflected the “Victorian obsession with this exotic species,” that, says Bowles, “symbolizes industry, adaptability, and resilience—all qualities that are integral to the concept of sustainability.” Having steeped himself in ornithological prints from the Audubon Society and the work of the American painter Martin Johnson Heade, his vision for the event started to bloom. Here, Bowles (who will be debuting a custom Maison Margiela Artisanal suit made by John Galliano from sustainable materials the night of the gala) gives us a virtual tour of the event.

“Like London’s Trafalgar Square or Manhattan’s Times Square, La Scala and its amazing piazza is the iconic heart of the city, so it’s quite a responsibility to stage any kind of aesthetic intervention there, and you’re understandably going to have to go through many layers of approval. [The buildings and statues on the square] all have such power that you only want to showcase and enhance them. We’ve been allowed, for the first time ever, to clad the facade of La Scala. [Working with] this amazing company called Bonotto, which weaves intricate fabrics from recycled plastics, we’ve created a 21st-century tapestry based on 19th-century images of hummingbirds that brings a bucolic spirit to the facade of La Scala. There will be projections on the facades of the Palazzo Marino, and we’ve also wrapped a real green sustainable carpet, made of Econyl, around the square.

“In the center, we’re planting a wild, rustic ‘recyclable garden’ with living growing plants grown by Rattiflora in pots that can then be reused, so it’s entirely sustainable. The great statue of Leonardo da Vinci is surrounded with a wattle fence made of wood reclaimed from forestry clearances, which allows you to see through it at the same time that it enhances this feeling of a fairy-tale, overgrown garden. It’s the sort of environment where hummingbirds might flourish.

“The color theme is a very intense pink and green. The nursery has been growing plants like Japanese anemones, Gaura, and wild Cyclamen; inside, it’s going to be like a market garden with potted plants. The backdrop for the step-and-repeat is living moss arranged like a vertical garden. There is an infinity of little details to think about. The legendary Italian fabric company Taroni has given us wonderful archive satins in the signature colors of the evening, which are sustainable by their very nature, and they are being used for the program covers. We loved the idea of creating a kind of experiential moment during the evening, so we’ve sourced these two great 19th-century garden frames—pergolas that really look like overscale birdcages—and hung swings inside them. They’re going to be twined with growing vines and plants and create a little Fragonard moment. For the awards themselves [Cate Blanchett, Julianne Moore, and Cindy Crawford have been announced as presenters], we’ve selected a full-on romantic, Rousseau-like, 18th-century French naturalistic landscape opera backdrop; it’s exciting to use something from La Scala’s archive.

“It’s been a wonderful learning curve and so exciting to see what beautiful, imaginative things you can do with sustainable materials. I hope it’s going to be an uplifting visual experience; it’s our intention to communicate the message that sustainability is beautiful and inspiring, and that it integrates the past, the future, and the present in the most dynamic and exciting way. And the butterflies seem to be loving it.”

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