Eco-activist Gisele Bündchen covers the April 2021 issue of Vogue Hong Kong’s Sustainability Issue. Bobette Cohn styles Gisele in three looks from Dior’s spring collection. Kevin O’Brien captures the supermodel on location in Costa Rica, where she has a home on the Nicoya Peninsula, near the beachside town of Santa Teresa./ Hair and makeup by Jenna Anton

I’m struck by the fact that two weeks ago, British Vogue’s first Contributing Sustainability Editor, Amber Valletta, posed in a Dior-rich fashion story ‘Women of the House’, lensed by Craig McDean.

To say that AOC adores Dior Creative Director Maria Grazia Chiuri is an understatement. While she is no Stella McCartney or Gabriela Hearst in the drive for sustainable fashion, Chiuri is wrestling with the topic. We have no doubt that she takes the sustainability challenge very seriously.

Vogue Hong Kong shares very old news about Gisele’s deep roots in the environmental movement. Yes, Gisele Bündchen’s efforts have resulted in planting 40,000 trees in the Brazilian Rainforest. The eco-activist has been a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations since 2009.

Most recently Gisele is the executive producer of ‘Kiss the Ground’, narrated by Woody Harrelson, with interviews with Bündchen, her husband Tom Brady and Patricia Arquette. The hopeful message of the documentary deals with the topic of Biosequestration or the capture and storage of the atmospheric greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by continual or enhanced biological processes.

A more “of the moment” question for Gisele Bündchen — not in Vogue Hong’s overview of her cover appearances — concerns the supermodel’s reaction to the reality that the Amazon rainforest is now a net-positive contributor to greenhouse gases on planet Earth.

Gisele Is Losing Her War to Save the Brazilian Rainforest

Given how hard the mother of two young eco-warriors, Benjamin and Vivian, has worked to change the reality of Gaia’s delicate balance in our modern world — and especially to maintain the Amazon rainforest’s prime position as the world’s ‘carbon sink’ — she must be devastated by this new research.

The Amazon rainforest could die completely in our lifetime because the brilliantly beautiful, caring Earth Mother Gisele Bündchen can’t plant new trees fast enough to save it.

Another high priority for Gisele is elephant conservation. Reality is that new research out of Africa on forest elephants and savannah elephants as separate categories is raising the status of forest elephants to ‘critically endangered’ and savannah elephants as ‘endangered’.

AOC’s point is that fashion magazines should address current environmental facts around the stories they are telling. Otherwise, it’s just feel-good reading that misses the big story. We imagine that Gisele Bündchen is furious over new research about her beloved Amazon rainforest. She has battled publicly and been rebuked in 2019 by Brazil’s agriculture minister, Tereza Cristina Dias, who called her a “bad Brazilian” for her environmental activism.

To be fair, perhaps the actual interview story in Vogue Hong Kong will address the grim reality of the situation in Brazil and Africa. But if it doesn’t, then the story is just another example of greenwashing.

Returning to Christian Dior as the commercial player in this story, it would be highly unusual for any stylist to pick three Dior outfits for three Vogue Hong Kong covers of a sustainability issue, without a financial or business incentive of some kind.

Giselle could have worn Stella McCartney, Gabriela Hearst and perhaps Burberry or Prada designs made of econyl regenerated nylon.

LVMH Launches Deadstock Fabric and Leather Business

What is it about Christian Dior that warrants this position of prominence connected to Vogue Hong Kong’s April 2021 sustainability issue? Perhaps there is a story about LVMH launching an online marketplace for unused fabric and leather, known as ‘deadstock’. That story broke Monday and is an excellent LVMH initiative.

We can thank LVMH sustainability adviser and business partner Stella McCartney as a key player in this new initiative. Stella was so successful at upcycling her own deadstock, that she was ravaging the storage facilities of other LVMH brands — including Dior — on the hunt for materials for her own pre-fall 2021 collection.