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The call of the wild is hard to hear for some, especially when runway music is playing. Not so for Lily Cole, the Vogue cover star turned high-profile environmentalist who, Cambridge education in tow, has attuned her inner voice, and public persona, to the calls of nature. Her first book, Who Cares Wins: Reasons for Optimism in Our Changing World, chronicles the solutions of our thought-leaders to mankind’s most pressing issues. It’s treacherous terrain to tread, but Lily’s many iterations; as leading lady of Hollywood spectacle, Extinction Rebellion signatory, face of Chanel, and Cambridge University graduate (First Class BA in History of Art) suggest she is more than up for the job.

This is the second chapter of Lily’s own story. Since her discovery outside a Soho burger bar aged 14, whirlwind fame (is there any other kind?) ensued, and with it campaigns for Alexander McQueen and Louis Vuitton, covers for everybody. Her shock of auburn hair and endlessly discoverable features led her to occupy the kind of space ingenues only dream of. Starring roles in St Trinian’s, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, and as the Virgin Queen in Channel 5’s Elizabeth I ensued. Lily’s fervour for the cause is meted out with a practical sensibility, that does nothing to diminish the former. The end result is a new brand of activism, suggesting an optimist’s view of the future might be, in fact, the best and only one. Her beliefs are unwavering—an unlikely prospect at present, amid a pandemic, and the rest.Because while the professional food world is dominated by white men, we know that most of the food in the world is actually cooked by women.”

Yet it’s this precise element that allows her the macro-picture; what would in corporate parlance be called the ‘blue sky thinking’. Her hopes, that she shared with Semaine, are in bipartisan progress and dialogue: “Globally: I hope that we push against the political trends that have been tending towards polarisation for some time; and try to find common ground (both between and within countries – between the “left” and the “right”) – to solve our emerging crises. I would hope in years to come that governments and companies have made huge progress towards decarbonisation (i.e. emitting far less than they are today); and that large tracts of nature have been protected for biodiversity to thrive.”