‘Ab Fab’'s Joanna Lumley Fronts Marks & Spencer Campaign
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Joanna Lumley and Marc Bolland launch the Marks And Spencer 'Shwop Drop' initiative at the Old Trueman Brewery in London.
Get ready for this, sweetie darling: Ab Fab just got even more fashion cred.
After fronting Alexis Bittar's campaign earlier this year, Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley got Stella McCartney and Kate Moss to cameo on their Sport Relief special. Today, the Telegraph reports that Lumley has been named the face of Marks & Spencer's Shwopping campaign. No, that wasn't a typo: as far as we can tell, Shwopping is a portmanteau of "shopping" and "swapping," which is appropriate given that the campaign promotes clothing recycling. (The Brit retailer's push began as a response to the statistic that 1 billion clothing items are thrown into U.K. landfills annually.)
Lumley is definitely of the recycle-reuse-reduce mindset. "I think young people have been encouraged to buy something, wear it for months and throw it out, particularly if they're not very good at...mending things. I donate a lot of my clothes to charity because I hate throwing things in the dustbin. It doesn't seem right to me. Hopefully, we will roll up to M&S with something we don't want anymore.
"I've regretted some of the things I've passed on [though]," the actress added. "I had a Sherlock Holmes-check swinging coat that I loved, it was beautiful."
While we'd love to have seen Patsy Stone in Baker Street couture, Lumley still has quite the wardrobe to fall back on. She was lucky enough to keep some of her costumes from the original run of Absolutely Fabulous, but revealed that she had to buy them from the BBC at a 50% discount.
Lumley made an appearance on London's Brick Lane today to promote the project, and will appear in a Rankin-lensed campaign. We're all for 60+ gals as spokesmodels, so it's heartening that Lumley is 65 and 62-year-old Twiggy is the current face of the retailer. However, you won't hear Lumley making any comparisons. "Twigs is miles ahead of me! I mean, she's a far bigger deal!" she says modestly.
