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Naomie Harris is one of Hollywood’s most ‘un-actory’ celebrities. Here she talks about Oxfam partywear, the Windrush scandal and bringing 007 up to date
Think of all the clothes that are thrown out every day. The sock that sprung a hole in the toe. The trousers that shrunk in the dryer. The daring top you bought on a whim and never summoned the confidence to wear. According to a 2017 survey, Britons throw out 300,000 tonnes of clothes a year, representing an annual value of around £12.5bn – which is close to the £350m a week Boris Johnson once pledged to the NHS in Brexit savings. That’s a lot of nurses.
Now imagine you had chosen to donate your clothes to Oxfam. Instead of polluting the oceans and adding to landfill, they might be gracing the actor Naomie Harris in a new campaign for the charity. On a wet October afternoon, she is cycling through a sequence of poses in a New York photo studio overlooking the Hudson River. A woman from the charity tells me they chose Harris “because she’s fabulous” and for once the word does not seem like hyperbole. Dressed in faux fur, her loose hair rippling in the current of a wind machine, Harris looks resplendent as she flings out her arms to Shakira’s Hips Don’t Lie. Behind her, a young man in a Mickey Mouse T-shirt clutches one end of a gauzy orange canvas and jumps up and down in order to make the material flutter prettily in the background. Continue reading...