Livia Firth awards Osklen the Green Carpet Challenge brandmark; promises John Galliano’s Green Challenge show will happen

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Jul 8, 2019

Eco-activist Livia Firth has awarded  Osklen, the hip, sustainable fashion brand led by Brazilian creative Oskar Metsavaht, the latest Green Carpet Challenge brandmark award for his revolutionary use of Pirarucu fish skin in fashion collections.

Firth, the co-founder and creative director of Eco Age, also promised that the Green Carpet Collection by John Galliano for Maison Margiela would go ahead in Paris this fall. Eco Age, Maison Margiela and LuisaViaRoma, Italy’s biggest independent e-tailer, jointly announced the postponement of the Galliano’s green collection five days before it was due to be unveiled on July 3 inside the British Embassy during the Paris Haute Couture season.
 
“Don’t worry, it’s only a postponement. It will take place for sure in September, during the next ready-to-wear season. John and the house of Margiela will make it happen,” Firth told FashionNetwork.com at a ceremony for Metsavaht and Osklen inside Les Jardins du Faubourg, a new boutique hotel near the embassy.

Firth, the founder of the Green Carpet movement, presented the award to Metsavaht at a luncheon attended by star French actor Vincent Cassel, a close buddy of Metsavaht, who also lives in Rio.
 
“There are few cooler, or better guys in Brazil than Oskar,” said a lean-looking Cassel, who speaks fluent Portuguese. While in Rio, he also shot his acclaimed ads for Vuarnet sunglasses on the roof of Janeiro, the new boutique hotel in Leblon directly on Ipanema beach, re-designed by Oskar, as everyone in Brazil knows him.
 
For more than a decade, Osklen has led the movement to create fashion products from sustainable e-fabrics. Most notably sneakers, out of Amazonian Pirarucu fish skins, recycled from waste in the food industry. By replacing pollutant diesel power with solar energy, Amazonian forest communities have a clean source of energy to supply the fish skins; develop jobs and enter the fashion supply chain using a formerly discarded material which previously created biological pollution.
 
“Few fashion brands have done more for the environment than Osklen,” said Firth to a cool audience of fashion editors. Oskar flew into Paris directly from the northern Amazon, his torso still covered in vegetable dyed tattoos, painted on him while  attending an annual ceremony of native people. The region is increasingly under pressure by the policies of the new, far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro, which essentially give a free pass to illegal logging, farming and mining thus causing a huge surge in deforestation.
 
“That’s why I was there. The Amazon is the lungs of the world and must be defended,” argued Metsavaht, whose own chest underlined his commitment to that cause.