Achieving the Impossible.com
By Elva Carri
We may know Lily Cole best for her work as a model, notably gracing a Vogue cover, but her work and creativity run wider than the talent she brings to the art of modeling. While some celebrities cash in on fame with a fragrance or fashion line, Cole has dedicated herself to creating the impossible.com.
Gift economy initiative ‘Impossible.com’ is a website and app that Lily started as a way to help people help each other. It helps make it easier to give and receive under categories like food, accommodation, travel and even services.
Before starting the site, Lily was researching the anthropology of the gift economy and looking for projects she could lend her support to. When she couldn’t find anything that reflected what she felt would work best, she settled on starting her own; something she didn’t take lightly, nor has it all been simple.
“Sometimes I have to compromise – to pay the bills, to pay to build a gift economy, to buy that coffee or that flight, or to learn – but more and more I’m living the life I believe in.” She says her mum, who was always thinking philosophically and discussing injustice is a big inspiration and that travelling also had an influence on her. “Experiencing different cultures and ways of life; seeing how relative our cultures are, and how free happiness is, how it is to be found anywhere and that it bears no real relationship to success as my society had defined it.’
Lily’s ensuring everything is a pure as she can possibly make it; even the website hosting comes from a carbon neutral company. “Anything in life can only begin with yourself – so you become a mirror and create a different reflection. And that, I believe, is probably the hardest, though simplest part.”
