Stella McCartney (Q4127)
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retailer of the designer's luxe women's fashions & accessories
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Stella McCartney |
retailer of the designer's luxe women's fashions & accessories |
Statements
2001
founder
I had a gem of a conversation with Stella McCartney about her pre-collection over Zoom this week. Never have I heard such a specific exposition on the subjectivity, empathy, and knowledge that goes into designing as a woman. It transpired over the imminent comeback of pencil skirts.We were hovering over a gray flannel suit with a jacket embroidered with metallic balls when it all started to come out. “That, for me, is the ultimate; I know I’m going to be wearing that,” she exclaimed. “I was fascinated by this below-the-knee length. Because, as we know, that’s incredibly critical. It’s a proportional thing, which I think is coming. Almost a midi pencil skirt. We’ve not seen that for a long time in a suit. It’s like, when is that right again? When something’s so wrong, it’s right—it’s very right to me.”She and her team have obsessed and finessed over every angle of what this new-fashioned garment should not only look like right now, but how it must perform. “I think a lot of the world we live in is now: Oh, you take a photograph, because everything is so content-driven. And I’m like, no! Because when you’re wearing it, it’s really different. One of the biggest precision-points, for me as a designer, is what happens when you move—so I’ve got a lot of skirts that hit just below, but not on the knee. When you walk in a pencil skirt, it edges up, so it’s critical that it hits you in the right place. Those tiny little details are everything.”She was on a great roll now. “There are rules I take into account. It’s what happens when you move, and also where it sits on the hip. It’s not tight on the waist. Not too low on the hip. They’re just in-between. Then: What happens in the back, and under the bum? Does the skirt just come straight down? Do you need a slit? Is the slit on the side?” She shook her head. “All my slits are in the back, because I find a slit on the side a little too much information. I don’t want that on that particular skirt, because then it becomes an evening skirt, or too sexy. And I’m not interested in that.”
4 December 2024
You’ve got to love Stella McCartney and frankly I do. Backstage after her terrificen plein airshow this gray yet (finally!) dry Paris morning, McCartney was fielding questions about the collection she’d just shown. It had riffed on swaggering big shouldered suiting and capacious trenches (both very much in evidence these past few days) for day and plissé dresses and delicate lingerie with slouchy trousers for night. All of this came with some very ’80s sculpted Charles Jourdan–esque high sandals, flat boxing boots for the pugilist in us all, and a new duffel bag shape called the Ryder in vegan materials which came in every size from delicately petite to big enough to accommodate plenty of clothing changes for a three-day trip. Watching the proceedings: Natalia Vodianova, unsurprisingly (she and McCartney are friends); and, very surprisingly, Virginie Viard, who recently departed Chanel, and was there for a rare public appearance with her son Robinson Fyot. It was a lovely gesture of sisterly solidarity that McCartney excels at.Anyway: Back to the backstage. What was McCartney’s favorite look? The blue bubbly cloud of a mini dress crafted out of recycled plastic bottles, she said. The fact she’d putMotheron a tank? Because, she replied, we’re all mothers and we inhabit Mother Earth, so it’s a pretty good word—then adding, conspiratorially, but don’t tell anyone, the wordfuckeris in tiny print at the bottom. And a question on her favorite color led her to talk about blue skies, and ergo, birds, the whole inspiration for the collection. Birds had been used as a dove print, a golden avian in flight as a bra top, a necklace, a bangle, and a hefty bag charm, and were on the soundtrack courtesy of Prince’s “When Doves Cry” and a specially written word piece intonated at the show’s opening by Helen Mirren. McCartney took a breath. “We’re talking about not killing birds this season,” she said, “but a billion and a half birds are killed for fashion. Feathers belong on birds, so we can be inspired by them. This season was about being elevated, being a bird, being free and seeing things from a different perspective: masculinity, femininity.
”This is classic McCartney, and is why, after being in business some 20-plus years, she retains her position as a creative force who’s willing to voice her criticisms of an industry which contributes—if one can use that word—to the environmental situation we currently find ourselves in, dancing not so merrily on the edge of a volcano. McCartney smartly understands the secret is to engage, and engage, and engage, again and again and again, every way you can: The About Fucking Time caps (she and PETA have used the phrase to highlight their new-ish campaign around animal welfare, or the lack thereof) which sat on every seat; the copies ofThe Stella Timeswhich were also there, a newspaper filled with facts and statistics; and more generally, the way she fuses hard and unpalatable truths with that tongue-in-cheek British sense of humor of hers to make people hopefully think. Her clothes today were great, really great, but when you consider everything else she is doing to sound the alarm on a situation which is likely heading towards a worrying unknown, you can only regard her with the greatest of respect.
30 September 2024
“When I walk into a room, I don’t want my clothes to scream, but at the same time, I don’t want to wear anything that comprises who I am.” Stella McCartney was describing the ‘delicate’ balancing act of designing as a woman, for women. It’s a subject which is rightly coming under renewed scrutiny, mainly because so many women creative directors have been replaced by men lately.The fact that McCartney has been designing for her peer group basically since she was made creative director at Chloé in 1997—when she was 26—gives her no little authority on these matters. (Plus the trust she’s built with like-minded customers through her pioneering of transparency and accountability in fashion production, and campaigning for animal rights, of course.) “Well,” she shrugged, with a small laugh, “Ihavebeen doing this a while.”McCartney’s staying-power is surely attributable to remaining true to her identity and all its facets—traces of which are imprinted as much on her pre-collections as her runways. “There’s a relationship with the show, but it’s done with as much work and love.” There’s her tailoring—big-shouldered pantsuits, and coats this time—her sensuously-wrapped dresses, her love of nature, and then, of course, “Horses! Because I can’t help myself.”The horsey American McCartney shows up in a shadowy green print of a stampede “running across a dustbowl - across your dress or pajamas.” Also in the faux-leather chaps implanted in a pair of jeans. “We’ve been doing well with them. And I’m proud of the denim.” (According to her scrupulous PR notes: Her denim production is “mainly of GOTS standard cotton (Global Organic Textile Standard), which follows strict environmental criteria and uses lower water and chemicals and natural measures to control pests and diseases.” What’s more: the seeds to plant the cotton aren’t genetically modified, like usual cotton. “We also use Regenerative Agriculture Cotton which restores bio diversity and improves soil health, whilst also improving the welfare of the farmers and local communities through additional revenue streams.”Botanical embroideries celebrate wild flowers and plants that thrive when humans get out of the way. “I’m a country-girl at heart. And you know, I love being there in the spring—that’s what these flowers mean to me. Poppies, buttercups, and daisies. Flowers that aren’t cultivated.
”Amongst the extensive range of wardrobe solutions (a nonchalantly elegant scarf-necked, slightly caped top stands out) McCartney also contrived a definite branding exercise. The chunky metal chains knitted into the scoop of a gray knit tank and running down the outside leg of jeans clearly echo and celebrate the famous silver-like chains that edge her Falabella non-leather signature bags. There were leather industry scoffers that she’d never be able to make a faux leather luxury handbag when McCartney launched the Falabella in 2010. It’s now a universally recognized classic, toted everywhere. Is Stella celebrating her 15th anniversary of being right about it? She didn’t say so, but she’d certainly deserve to, upcycled and recyclable aluminum chains, and all.
11 June 2024
The Stella McCartney show began with a video message from Mother Earth, a manifesto read by the actor Olivia Colman. It goes:“You have called me many names / And you know my face / You see me in the trees / The birds / The waves / You all came from me / In harmony / So why are you harming me? / We are always together / And despite your attempts at emancipation / You cannot cut the umbilical cord that connects the entire planet / Sorry, baby / I am the only mother where it is natural for her to outlive her children / But what will be left of me / After you? / I still love you / Do you still love me? / I need you to show it / Show me you love me / It’s about fucking time / It’s about fucking time / It’s about fucking time.”If you read the climate headlines, it can feel like it’s already too late. More than a million acres of the Texas Panhandle have burned in the still-raging Smokehouse Creek fire, and scientists are warning about a crucial tipping point in the warming of the Atlantic Ocean that could precipitate system collapse. Less calamitous but equally telling is how early spring has sprung here in Paris. The equinox is two weeks away, and the magnolia trees are already blooming. It’s the same elsewhere. How does a woman, especially if she’s a mother, not get depressed about it all?McCartney is preternaturally upbeat—maybe it’s all the time she spends in the country?—and that refusal to see the cup half empty infuses her collections. Though her tailored jackets are cut with power shoulders that could command a board meeting, she styles and sends them down the runway sans shirts or underpinnings.On the more laid-back side of things, slouchy matching knit sets are accessorized with loopy yarn boas long enough to dust the floor with. There’s not the preciousness you get with other high-fashion labels; McCartney wants you to have a bit of fun in her clothes.Other cases in point this season included the tailoring with cut-crystal detailing in the style of a Chloé collection McCartney designed circa spring 2000 and jeans with built-in eco-leather chaps accompanied by a tank printed with the ending refrain of the Mother Earth manifesto. That much of this had been constructed with responsibly sourced or recycled materials and vegan alternatives to animal products is another reason to feel good in McCartney’s clothes.
None of it will save Mother Earth, but wearing it and supporting McCartney might help spread the word about all the trouble that’s coming, and that’s at least something.
4 March 2024
It seems highly intentional that Stella McCartney is releasing this pre-fall collection today, in the midst of the climate change conference COP 28. Several days ago in Dubai the designer spoke about the enormous impact on the planet of the fashion business, as the world’s second biggest polluter after the oil industry.“If somebody watches this and they realize that 100 million animals are killed a year, if even one person here can digest that information and think, ok, my next purchase is going to be non-leather—you’ve got to have hope that every piece of information that people are given can [help them] be conscious in their consumption,” she said.McCartney has built a “vegetarian company,” meaning she hasn’t used fur, leather, or feathers since she launched her brand in 2001, and has stayed at the forefront of innovations around alternative materials. This season, she’s touting BioPuff, a down replacement made from the bulrushes that grown in regenerative wetlands, and thus have some of the same properties as feathers—the material is not just lightweight and fluffy, but also water-repellant, and she’s using it for a padded version of her best-selling Falabella bag.Birds, in turn, are one the collection’s motifs. The trio of party looks that open the lookbook are trimmed in pleated and shredded tulle that has the whimsical, weightless quality of real plumes, and several looks later the high slit of full skirt in bright yellow is lined in organza cut to look like authentic feathers. Monochrome tiger stripes on a shaggy wool coat—responsibly sourced, her press materials point out, like 93% of the collection—keeps her larger message about the sanctity of animal life, and its interconnectedness with ours as humans, going.Pre-fall collections tend to be full of sartorial workhorses, so rounding out the lineup are McCartney’s familiar sharp suits, and slinky knit separates, the former as masculine as the latter are feminine and sexy. A double-breasted jacket in a classic check worn over a lilac lace-edged slip dress brings the two stories together.
4 December 2023
Stella McCartney set up her show at the Marché Saxe-Breteuil. On Thursdays and Saturdays it’s a popular open-air market, with vendors selling fresh produce, fish, cheese, bread, and flowers. Today there were representatives from companies pioneering new fabric technologies like NFW Mirum, which makes plant-based leather, and Keel Labs, which produces seaweed-based fibers; stashes of vintage Stella McCartney clothes and stacks of old records; and a merch stall dedicated to Wings, her mum and dad’s band. The market opened up to the public after the show, and all the money raised from sales will go to charities aligned with McCartney’s anti–animal cruelty, responsible-design philosophies.The Wings booth was the key to the collection, which was an exploration of her parents Paul and Linda McCartney’s complementary style. A Google dive reveals that the much-photographed couple often dressed alike, whether they were in ’70s pantsuits on their bikes, in matching satin baseball jackets in the back of a limo, or in trenches as they disembarked from a plane with a youthful Stella (or maybe her sister Mary) in their arms.From her father (whose fab wardrobe is one of the many things that made Peter Jackson’s Beatles documentary such fun to watch) came the tuxedo shirts and cummerbunds and a terrific look that combined a willowy vest and full trousers with a white blouse trailing long poet sleeves. Her late mother was the horseback-riding, vegetarian-cookbook-author free spirit and a photographer and musician besides. The mirror-embellished dresses crocheted from Keel Labs’s seaweed-based yarn Kelsun and worn by both genders tapped into her rebellious streak. Elsewhere, the cape-like backs of tops and dresses made with taffeta from Nona Source, the LVMH-backed deadstock platform, seemed to have been designed to evoke wings, while the brocade short-shorts looked like stage-ready tour costumes.McCartney’s press notes stated that 95% of the materials in the collection are “conscious materials.” There’s a growing consensus that sustainability no longer needs to be part of the conversation, that it’s a given. That couldn’t be further from reality. McCartney should keep drumming on about it until she’s not the only luxury designer who can stake a claim to stats like hers.
2 October 2023
When the press notes said “Lady Garden,” you could only guess what the Stella McCartney experience had in store. Her self-referential Y2K moment of previous seasons has been a hit with Gen Z. Young women of the early 2000s swore by the Brazilian, but perhaps she had decided to embrace the pro-pubic attitude of a new youth? It wasn’t what her Lady Garden was about, “but pubic hair is a whole other conversation, which I’m quite obsessed with,” she acknowledged on a video call from her West London studio.The title of the collection—created from 90% environmentally responsible materials—referred to a woman-centric way of dressing: women claiming their own wardrobes for themselves; imbuing them with comfort, sexiness, and empowerment; and turning fashion into a female-driven support system. “It’s about having a group of people around you, who allow you to be yourself. There’s something about this wardrobe that supports you and brings out the best in you. They comfort you and celebrate you,” McCartney said.She translated the idea into a collection that accentuated the female form through the dramatic sculpting of otherwise easy dresses, or through the exaggerated curves of tailored suits and blazer dresses. Her ongoing Y2K spirit invoked a knitted body-con jumpsuit with a deep V-neck decolletage fit for a music video circa 2003, baggy jeans with crystal-encrusted star cut-outs around the hip bones (a revived erogenous zone), and the corsets McCartney still wants women to reclaim.“Chanel’s idea of freeing people from their corsets was based on Victoriana, which was traumatic and horrific, and I don’t think corsets are like that for women anymore. It’s in need of modernizing, that conversation. It’s about embracing a corset because you want to wear it and it’s not underneath 25 layers of fucking crinoline,” she smiled. McCartney tucked the bottom tip of hers into a pair of oversized, low-slung tuxedo pants that backed up her point.A new floral print visualized the Lady Garden in graphic form with hidden images disguised in seas of flowers. “No, they’re not vaginas. They’re faces. It’s got a little nod to surrealism, and a lightness of touch,” she said. An all-over denim print paid tribute to the animals that also fill McCartney’s Lady Garden, including little outlines of horses that linked to the incredible live horse show she put on in Paris in March.
It summed up the synergies—from horses to Y2K and the increased female-driven sensibility—that are really doing it for Stella McCartney at the moment, and which this collection easily reflected. It works because it’s authentically her, she explained, and pulled up a video on her phone. “This is one of my proudest-ever achievements: a foal! Her name is Whistler,” she said, showing off the first horse she’s bred on her farm in Gloucestershire, a two-week-old Quarter horse with legs for days.
7 June 2023
Judging from the models’ stoicism in these pictures, it’s hard to believe that seven un-haltered white Camargue horses were running around the sand-strewn arena immediately to the left of the runway. They entered the Manège de l'École Militaire to a fanfare ofPersonal Jesusby Depeche Mode—“reach out, touch faith!”—wafting their long silvery manes as they galloped through the 18th century riding ring. They were joined by the horse whisperer Jean-François Pignon, who gently encouraged them to rear, run in circles and roll around in the sand. “There’s so much leather and feather and fur on the runway, especially in winter, and I just wanted to show that you can do it in a different way. You don’t have to kill anything,” Stella McCartney said after the show. It was pretty epic.McCartney is vegan, but also someone who believes in harmonious relationships between humans and animals. Her mother Linda bred Appaloosa horses, and to this day, the designer still rides. She has a horse named Summer and keeps dogs, too. “I have a farm in the country and there’s still a hunt next door. I want to make people aware that that’s still going on. Yes, they may not rip it to pieces with dogs, but they shoot the fox. It’s just crazy to me,” she said. Her collection was an exercise in claiming and re-appropriating the codes of the British equestrian wardrobes associated with hunting and the warhorses of the Great War, and all the things McCartney doesn’t believe in.“It’s beautiful: the tailoring, the bespoke work. As someone who studied that for many years, you can’t get away from it,” she said, reflecting on those uniforms. “The relationship between the man and the woman and the horse and nature, it’s this kind of pull-and-push, and I think there’s a poetry at the center of it all.” McCartney applied her equestrian grammar to the Y2K language of her own fashion history, which she first re-introduced last season. The fusion materialized in skimpy hussar jackets, little cropped vests, deconstructed denim suits from another equestrian culture, and low-riding trousers that infused McCartney’s Chloé-era draped hip chains with fresh tack associations.Those memories continued in dresses and knitwear that revived the horse print from her spring/summer 2001 collection for Chloé, albeit in a blurry evocation.
McCartney’s ongoing rekindling with her own archives from her tenure at the house is timely—it’s what the kids want (just ask her teenaged daughter) but it’s clearly also invigorating the designer in new ways. Everything suddenly feels a little bit more impassioned in the house of Stella. Last season’s oversized blazers and coats were back today—as on many other runways this month—now adorned in the checks of horse blankets and some sculpted with the nipped-in waists of hunting jackets. As a nod to her family history, McCartney emblazoned her mother's horse photography on evening dresses, and the horse photography of her sister Mary on shirts—one worn by Pignon himself.Asked to elaborate on the relationship between the collection and horses, McCartney smiled: “I guess the main relationship is that they’re alive and the clothes haven’t killed anything. There’s a celebration of everyone living in harmony together.” Next to an exhaustive list of the sustainable materials that made up the collection (too long to mention but accessible on her website), she enforced that philosophy in three new handbags created from state-of-the-art alternatives to animal leather: one from the plant-based, plastic-free and circular material MIRUM; another crafted in croc-effect AppleSkin made from apple waste; and the first-ever bag made from a white version of the mushroom material Mylo.
6 March 2023
Since the shows in October, few looks have been featured as heavily on social media as the low-slung tailored trousers and chain tops Stella McCartney brought back from her early-2000s Chloé days. The Y2K nostalgia looks great through the binoculars of a new generation, but nothing hits the spot quite like the real deal. “We cannot keep a look in the showroom for 24 hours,” her representative said during a video preview of its follow-up collection for pre-fall. “My daughter is going to be 16 next week, and the best thing was that she was like, ‘I want this, I want this, I want that…’ It was like, finally! Finally, my kid is actually alright with something,” McCartney laughed, breathing a sigh of relief.Getting the stamp of approval from the discerning generation to which her daughter belongs is a big deal, and a wave worth riding. This season, McCartney expanded her self-referential approach in a collection that honed pieces not just from her early years but the span of her career. “Let’s actually pay homage to what I do,” she said, recounting its point of departure. “But it’s trying to make everything ‘the perfect one’: the perfect volume, the perfect length.” She applied that study to Stella-centric formidable blanket coats, slip dresses informed by her graduate collection, 2000s-cut denim overlaid with chaps, and the bossy, sexy masculine tailoring intrinsic to her brand.When McCartney designed those things the first time around, she was a lone voice calling for sustainability in a fashion industry that would take another couple of decades to catch on. In a new world where the Y2K-loving young generations aren’t simply expecting their nostalgia to look good but to do good, too, it feels like something is coming full circle for her. “It’s so easy for me, because it’s really, really me. That’s my life,” she said, referring to her archival revivals. But, “the difference now is the very relevant scientific layer. Now it’s banana leather. Back then, I didn’t have faux leather. The shoes were made out of cotton. It’s great to be able to modernize it.”That philosophy underpinned a collection exemplified by McCartney’s ingenious forays into sustainable materials. 94% of the garments and accessories were created from responsible fibers, including the forest-friendly viscose she swears by, regenerative cotton denim, recycled yarn crafted from plastic bottles, and bags and shoes in leather substitutes including the banana peel kind.
In an age that gives equal love to awareness and nostalgia, it would appear McCartney is having a good old-fashioned fashion moment, the forward-thinking way. “The future…” she paused, reflecting on her scientific evolutions… “It might actually happen, you know!”
12 December 2022
Backstage after her open-air presentation in front of the Centre Pompidou, Stella McCartney summed up her show in a stream of consciousness that deserves to be quoted in full. “Oh, Jeff Koons and Jerry Seinfeld! Hello! They flew in just for this show, these two,” she said and waved at the actual Jeff Koons and Jerry Seinfeld across a hallway. “Right, back to business: My first outdoor show ever. Bit nervy. Knew it was gonna be rain-free. Was nervous about the sound but sounded great, in my humble opinion. It’s the first time my father and Monsieur Arnault have met. It’s been entwined now. The deal is set. These are the men in my life, and my husband was there, too. It’s a three-way. It’s 87 percent sustainable, this collection, which is my most sustainable yet. I’m so chuffed. I hope nothing was compromised. You shouldn’t see any of the sustainability. It should just look like the most glamorous show.”It did, thanks in no small part to the high-octane Y2K genetics that coursed through its veins. The show opened with tweaked reissues of McCartney’s gold chain tops from her Chloé spring 2000 collection worn under super-sized blazers with asymmetrical skirts and net stockings. Amber Valletta didn’t wear the draped gold chain top she originally modeled with white denim hot pants in that same show (someone else did, with an added white tank top underneath), but she wear a tailored jumpsuit like the one Raquel Zimmermann had in McCartney’s eponymous spring 2009 show. The Hadids brought the noughties nostalgia full circle: Gigi in a sculpted cargo suit that echoed McCartney’s Savile Row days; Bella in a shrunken vest and low-riding trousers with rhinestone-encrusted cut-outs around the hips that would have had Shakira circa Whenever, Wherever spilling kisses like a fountain.Right now, there’s no bigger gold vein in youth-oriented fashion than Y2K dressing. While at Chloé, McCartney’s influence on the era was so vast that you might wonder why the brand’s current custodian, Gabriela Hearst, hasn’t mined those archives already. Asked if it feels weird to see her own work revived in such a big way, McCartney sighed. “It makes me feel extremely old! My daughter, who’s 15, all she does now is go into my closet and take all my original things. And I’m like, ‘Oh, but I make similar things now.’ She’s not interested. She just wants the ’90s.” Nostalgia wasn’t, however, the driving force behind McCartney’s choice to adapt and reissue these pieces.
The Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara was. She used his depictions of children as motifs on garments, and focused the collection around his slogan, “Change the History.”“I want to look back at my history and redefine where I started and where I am now and what the next Stella looks like,” said McCartney, explaining her trip down memory lane. For her, of course, that transition has everything to do with sustainability. She re-evoked the 2000s through the finest technology the 2020s have to offer: garments in regenerative bio-diverse cotton that “encourages nature”; shoes in plant-based materials like faux leather made out of grape skins; bags in mycelium mushroom leather; and rhinestone pieces created without animal glues and solvents. In a season that’s seen Dolce & Gabbana reviving their Y2K archives with the help of Kim Kardashian, and the likes of Versace and Fendi taking the era’s low-slung trousers to new gravities, McCartney’s reenergizing of the fashion history she helped shape in such a big way felt both ethically and epically right.
3 October 2022
“Rewilding and rechilding.” As taglines go, Stella McCartney has herself a winner this season. Who hasn’t dreamed of returning to their youth, before we’d heard about the threats or seen first-hand the impacts of global warming? Rewilding, for those not plugged into the climate change conversation, involves restoring and protecting wilderness areas by more or less letting nature take care of itself.McCartney is both the creative director of her own brand and fashion’s foremost sustainability proponent. She’s been reading up on the subject of rewilding via the British naturalist Miriam Rothshild (nickname Queen Bee) and is putting some of its principles into practice at her home in the English countryside. On a Zoom call, she cheerfully promised it can be done on a Manhattan fire escape too, by adding soil and a little log pile to a shoe box and leaving it be. “Nature will come, you’ll see,” she told me. As long as it’s one of my neighoborhood’s red tail hawks, and not the other kinds of wildlife New York City is so well known for.The designer’s natural-born optimism permeates this collection, which was shot in and around her eco factory in Novara, Italy. McCartney has reason to feel positive. She reported that 85% of the collection was produced sustainably, an in-house record. Among the developments here are bags and trainers made from grape leather, a material created from the grape waste produced in the wine-making process that is more readily available than the mycelium leather alternative she’s also championing.The rewilding and rechilding concepts she spoke about manifested on a twist-neck blouse printed with creatures forced out of Great Britain by civilization (lynx included), and in brightly colored cotton broderie anglaise dresses and separates as sweet as doll’s clothes. She cut her trademark boss tailoring in tiger stripe jacquards and soft pink wool, but she also played around with miniskirts, her shortest in recent memory. You could say McCartney took the theme to heart. Low-slung yellow jeans and a cami in the same acid shade conjured her ’90s wild child days.
26 May 2022
Stella and Stella—the headline writes itself. “I’ve known Frank for quite a long time, and I’ve always wanted to collaborate with him,” Stella McCartney said of Frank Stella, with whom she joined forces on her collection this season. “I love his minimalism and maximalism. It’s such a parallel to our brand: the very simple masculine side with the more explosive side. When you look at Frank’s work, it really tracks that quite well.”In a tube atop the Centre Pompidou which houses the artist’s work, McCartney presented a collection which interpreted Stella’s practice in both motif and lines. A collage-y print lifted from the lithograph Spectralia was employed in an oversized suit and a long-sleeved dress with a slightly ballooned skirt; a draped plissé dress and a top featured elements from the abstract Ahab.Said top was fitted with the defining sleeve of McCartney’s collection: a bonkers application stitched around the shoulder in the manner of a ruched curtain, which also featured on what the press release wittily coined “chintz dresses.” They set the tone for a collection that—not unlike Stella’s sculpture work—was rich in unpredictable silhouettes, like skirts seemingly suspended from bikinis, jumpsuits woven from metal threads that burst out into fringes, or puff-sleeved cargo jumpsuits that could have been the uniform of an artist.“He had to approve all the collection, which is funny, because Frank’s really moody and we love him for it,” McCartney said. “He has incredibly good taste. When you talk to him he has such a knowledge of art and design. And there were a few things where he was like, ‘Uh, no,’ but it was for reasons that were just so interesting. I loved his perspective on why.” The inter-Stella dialogue (sorry, had to) often made for some really weird propositions, which were fun to see on McCartney’s runway.In the trendier department, the season’s go-to silhouette infiltrated this runway, too: the oversized jacket styled over a lingerie element and a slinky leg component, with the season’s runner-up just behind it in the shape of bodysuits, which—in this case—underlined the sculptural premise of the collaboration. McCartney accessorized her collection courtesy of an innovative technology that turns grape skins into mock leather, “so all the wine you’ve been drinking lockdown has been turned into a handbag,” she said.Asked about the John F.
Kennedy peace speech that played as guests took their seats, and the finale soundtrack featuring the Plastic Ono Band’s Give Peace a Chance, McCartney—who made a donation to CARE, an organization providing emergency crisis support to Ukraine—said she needed to address the contrast of organizing a fashion showcase at this moment in time: “It’s a very strange thing to do under the circumstances. We wanted to make a statement against war.”
7 March 2022
The white suit in the opening look of Stella McCartney’s collection was informed by one worn by John Lennon in her favorite picture. “It’s of John and Yoko [Ono], and I’ve always loved how he looks in it. It’s the perfect cut, the perfect lapel, the perfect everything,” she said on a call from her West London home. In recent months, the designer has been absorbed inGet Back, the Peter Jackson-directed documentary on the making of The Beatles’ final album,Let It Be. As the daughter of Paul McCartney, Stella created a capsule collection in support of the documentary, which segued into this collection.“Get Back is my favorite period of fashion. It was a period when I wasn’t born yet, but the fashion didn’t change much in the years after,” she said, referring to the late-’60s silhouettes that kicked off ’70s glam. When you’re a kid you don’t think about any of it, but it was definitely impactful. I knew I wanted to be a fashion designer very early on from the memories I had looking at my parents’ wardrobes and going on to Savile Row. For me, it goes beyond the look and the image, obviously. It’s what smells I associate with it… I had access to touching those suits. They were in my life. They’re very important memories for me,” she said, adding how she and her family would visit Lennon and Ono in New York’s Dakota building during the first 10 years of her life.McCartney channeled her personal approach into a collection that was often devoted to the tailoring at the core of her fashion education. “It’s how I, as a woman, truly want to wear tailoring, still, to this day. I’ve been doing it forever and it’s never really come off-piste,” she said. “Everyone needs a great suit, and I think it’s an interesting moment to bring back the suit. They’ve gone out of fashion a little, but at the moment they’re very much back in the conversation, and I wanted to celebrate that.” In the process, she leaned into tailoring that cuts to the contours of the body, a contrast to what she called the “over-scaled impact suiting” of our current fashion moment.
10 January 2022
Stella McCartney is doing mushrooms. Tons of them. In fact, she’s so into mushrooms that she decided to devote her entire return to Paris Fashion Week to what she proclaimed to be “the future of fashion.” Presented under an appropriately shaped dome within the Oscar Niemeyer building in the 19th arrondissement, her collection marked the first time a bag made entirely out of so-called mushroom leather has seen a Fashion Week runway.Making its debut in look 14, Frayme Mylo appeared as a black version of the brand’s existing Frayme handbag. The material was created in the labs of Mylo, which McCartney has been working with since 2017. “The mushrooms are grown in labs, so they use no water and barely any electricity. They are pressed down and formulated into a faux leather,” she explained, adding that four years ago the innovation wasn’t advanced enough to produce a bag. “Now we’re at the point where I feel like I can roll it out. Otherwise I wouldn’t have put it on the runway.”Inspired by the progress, McCartney covered her collection in a hand-drawn toile de Jouy–like mushroom print and scored the show with a soundtrack made from recordings of high-quality microphones attached to mushrooms during their growth process. It’s no wonder all those mushrooms had an invigorating effect on her collection. Created in record time (“We only decided to have a show about 10 days ago,” she said), there was an infectious sense of impulse and authenticity about it, which hit the post-pandemic sweet spot.Dresses cut like swimsuits expanded into slinky skirts and evolved into lean jumpsuits. Piped bustiers evoked an idea of corsetry within non-constricting dresses. Fringing used in the context of workwear kept a consistent vibrancy and movement to garments, which—supported by a bright underwater color scheme—made for an energetic, sexy, and quite dramatic wardrobe, which felt optimistic without entering the annoying territory that often comes with upbeat fashion.“It’s been such a period of transition, and I wanted to project what the future could be like for the house of Stella: a lightness of touch, a slightly more tender approach, still mixing these sporty pieces and the masculine,” said McCartney. Her mushroom bags will be produced in a limited edition of 100 pieces, and—for now—retail at a somewhat higher price point than your average leather bag. “But it’s not killing any animals; it’s not cutting down any trees.
It’s the future of fashion if you can get it right, and I think we can,” she explained. “It’s the beginning of something new.”
4 October 2021
Earlier this month Stella McCartney posted a trio of portraits to her Instagram. In each one, she posed with a world leader: Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron, Justin Trudeau. She was one of 10 CEOs and founders invited by the G7 to discuss where industry and policy need to intersect for a sustainable future. It’s serious business, working for “a more clean, conscious, and cruelty-free fashion industry and planet,” as she put it, but McCartney looked like she was having good fun. Therein lies the appeal of her brand, which, ifVogueRunway’s archives are anything to go by, turns 20 this year.For resort, McCartney leaned into fun in a big way. “When we shot the lookbook, it was very much about celebrating individuality, but also about coming together,” McCartney said. “It was these girls out at a club, because I think we’re all desperate to go and hear loud music somewhere. They’re just enjoying the moment and living their best life. This collection for me is a real celebration of where we know we’re going to get very soon.”McCartney’s cyber girls wore diamanté slips trimmed in neon lace, jersey dresses flocked in William Bradley via Haight Ashbury psychedelic logo prints, and user-friendly dresses with drawstrings to adjust the level of cling and hem length. Others sported corset tops and hip-slung raver pants, rainbow swirl sherpa jackets and lace-inset joggers, or a biker jersey and balloon shorts. The collection made room for a few tailored looks; these had the easy structure that McCartney is known for, but they might’ve looked staid in comparison with the rest if she hadn’t cut them in candy pastels.The Y2K flashbacks were intentional—the era is trending IRL and on digital runways. The difference is these clothes are being made responsibly, with 71% eco-friendly materials, according to a release. McCartney said she was proudest of the new Frayme bag made from Alter Mat vegan leather, a “little sister” to her classic Falabella.
30 June 2021
During her collection shoot at Tate Modern, Stella McCartney took a moment to walk through the museum on her own. As it has been left deserted by the pandemic, she had every gallery to herself. “It was just me, alone in the Tate, looking at the Lichtensteins, the Delaunays, the Légers,” she said, on the phone from London. “It was amazing. It made me feel happy to be alive again.” While her collection was imbued with those feelings, there was more to it than plain post-lockdown joie de vivre. In a time when many designers are resetting—cutting things back to the core—McCartney turned up the volume higher than she has in years. Fittingly, she described it as “extreme.”To understand the emotional value of the trippy techniques, bold colors, warped motifs, and cyber textures that blasted through her collection, you have to understand the transformation McCartney has been going through. Before the pandemic, she bought her company back from Kering, entered a new partnership with LVMH, and found herself in the midst of a global climate revolution as the industry’s trailblazer. “The business was going through a transition, which was in my every breath. Those changes mixed with COVID changes were an epiphany moment,” she said. “Now, I want it to feel like a fresh start for the brand; a rebirth.”To fashion, the lockdown period has served as a magnifying glass for sustainable reforms. It must have felt like an absolution for McCartney, who spent the year publishing an “A to Z Manifesto” of her brand values and outlining her every sustainable move, in material available on her website. It’s worth the read. The causes she has represented over two decades in the industry are no longer “Stella’s causes,” but everyone’s causes. And if they have sometimes taken focus from her creativity, the new fashion climate allows her clothes to shine in a different way. “What’s so lovely is to be asked aboutthe collectionagain,” she exclaimed after half an hour of pure clothes talk, hinting at years of sustainability-focused interviews.It doesn’t make it any less important to highlight the 77% of sustainable materials and state-of-the-art upcycling and vegan technologies that went into this collection.
But they are not what made her teenage daughter Bailey ask for the popcorn-textured 3D-knitted Klein blue flares and hoodie that recalled the spiked rubber jumpers of the 1990s (“I said, ‘They’re not cheap, and you’re only 14!’”), or what made those mosaic trousers constructed from faux leather embroidered on tulle so entrancing. Those effects were the joy of fashion, and a return to the audacity, youthful energy, and wit that catapulted McCartney into fashion fame in the first place all those years ago.“There’s a fearlessness and newness to youth. You feel less liberated as you get older,” she reflected. “This brand is so young in so many aspects—its belief systems, how we don’t come at anything in a conventional way—and I want the spirit of what I do to come through in the fashion too.” These clothes felt extremely personal to Stella McCartney, but they were loaded with a kind of energy we could all do with at this point in time.
23 March 2021
When debates about industry change kicked off last summer, pre-collections quickly became synonymous with fashion’s material overload. You might have expected Stella McCartney to join that crusade, beacon for sustainability that she is. But as she explained on a phone call from her house in Worcestershire, these collections don’t have to be a bad thing. “I don’t call them ‘pre.’ I call them ‘spring’ and ‘autumn.’ I don’t know how someone can call something ‘pre.’ From the moment you’ve even started, it’s all been dropped into an area that has less importance. I have a swear jar that has the wordcommercialon it, because for me, anything that gets made should have a value to it.”Fall 2021 marked McCartney’s second such collection after the pandemic gave her the epiphany that launched her A-to-Z manifesto. Released last year, the guide cements everything her brand stands for, and commits to an even bigger push for sustainability in the future. She kept those promises in this collection, which was 80% sustainable and came with a look-by-look breakdown of the sustainability in-built in every garment and accessory. It’s McCartney’s way of cutting a stern contrast to the greenwashing she says is rampant among other brands. Taking cues from the sportswear wardrobes—and in particular, skiwear, a much-loved activity of hers—she didn’t just activate her sustainable fabrications; instead she used up the overstock of said fabrics she’s been saving for the last 20 years. As she put it: “Whatever we had left from previous seasons…that we hadn’t burned or buried, which is what all the other houses do.”It’s important to highlight the fact that McCartney isn’t simply using overstock for the samples you see in these pictures, but for her production too. “A lot of these pieces are limited edition because when we run out, we run out. I don’t care if I’m cutting off my nose to spite my face, I’m going to save the bloody planet.” It’s left her with the wonderful problem of not having enough waste. “I said, ‘Where did our faux fur go?’ They said, ‘Stella, we used it up last season!’” And so, some materials will have to be reordered, “but really precisely, so we don’t incur any waste.”Now McCartney is working with her parent group, LVMH, on accessing the overstock of their other brands. “We’ve got to find other people’s waste,” she said. Meanwhile, she used this collection to demonstrate how upcycling can work on a creative level.
Highly graphic nylon garments were patchworked from print fabrics of which there wasn’t enough overstock to create solid pieces. The sporty nature of those garments set the tone for a joyful offering to which you could easily apply the very current ideas of “comfortwear” and “emergent fashion” (for our post-lockdown lives), but as McCartney pointed out, we used to apply the same characteristics to a wardrobe made for people on the go. Movement and comfort are things she’s always considered.Within that philosophy is also the idea of clothes that get better with age, a certain timelessness some might see as a cornerstone of a pre-collection but with which McCartney imbues her every design. Among those pieces were recycled fleece, fusions between lingerie and swimwear known as Stellawear (an invention created from regenerated nylon made from fishing nets and factory waste and nontoxic elastane), and new recyclable chains on her vegan Falabella bags, which recently hit the 1-million-sold mark. “That’s 400,000 cows that haven’t been killed,” McCartney noted. “When you start putting things into how much ocean plastic you’ve used, or how much rainforest you haven’t cut down, or how much water you haven’t used, it’s kind of amazing.”
8 February 2021
“I was sitting in my house, trying to fit things on myself. We were sending packages to each others’ homes, taking selfie videos.” Stella McCartney’s resort collection was made—before her summer 2021 one—at the height, or in the depths, of lockdown. For several weeks, her team had been using stock fabric and pieces of sample materials that had been stored up because, McCartney said, “we don’t landfill or burn anything.” And out of that whole experience came this collection, and the writing of her recently published Manifesto, in which she consolidated all her principles, and broke them down into an A-Z list.It’s fitting then, that the first look, a patchworked fake-fur coat “made with fabrics from many collections” goes right back to what started McCartney out on the path to “sustainability”—her determination to show that good-looking fashion can be made without cruelty to animals. TheAin Stella McCartney’s lexicon stands foraccountability—which means pledging to come through on stated promises, and publishing reports on how and whether those goals have been reached. Which is as honest and open as any designer, house, or brand can be—and puts McCartney in the simultaneous position of being both the leader in the field, and the one who is the most boldly self-critical in admitting how far there is to go.So, if even Stella McCartney has decided to step up on controlling waste, editing down looks, veering away from virgin materials, and stating where everything is sourced—the urgency is real. “In 2020, ‘reduce and focus’ is a mantra for me. I think that’s a really good point to be at in every corner of life now. I was thinking about paring back, reducing what we do in general as a brand even before the pandemic. We never throw materials away or burn them. We looked at our warehousing, saw what we’ve got in stock, repurposed and reused it.” She even uttered the phrase “buy less, wear more!”—a blasphemy against the fashion cycle. A good one to hear, though—if, that is, we may all agree that reining in our own galloping consumption, slowing down, and making wise choices is the only way forward?That’s why this collection could be read less as a themed thing, than a focused résumé of what Stella McCartney does best. Designing timelessness and usefulness into her clothes—her tailoring, made of certified wool raised on a particular farm in New Zealand.
Going forward with science and technology—the first vegan Stan Smiths; over-the-knee boots made with recycled wood soles. Being sexy—turning out short dresses, made of reappropriated lace. Enjoying blasts of being silly and playful—the animal outfits which ended the finale parade of her last runway show in March, back at “home,” celebratingHforhumorin the Stella McCartney lexicon.
26 October 2020
If the subject of sustainability has traditionally lacked sex appeal, Stella McCartney is here to spice things up. Fashion’s most passionate environmentalist spent the lockdown period working on an “A-to-Z manifesto” for the sustainable future of her brand, reinforcing every idea she’s ever believed in:Afor “accountable,”Ofor “organic,”Vfor “vegan,” and so on. Rather well-connected, she asked artist pals, from Cindy Sherman to Jeff Koons and George Kondo, to illustrate the different entries, which are being published on her Instagram.“There’s so much greenwashing going around,” McCartney said in a video conference, referring to other fashion brands, “and there’s so much confusion going on. I barely know what the wordsustainablemeans anymore. So it’s to give a level of clarity, really.” While the A-to-Z helped to make some heavy topics more digestible, it was her saucy collection that did the job of selling her enduring message of sustainability. It was presented in a short film captured around the gardens of Houghton Hall in Norfolk, decorated dramatically in contemporary sculpture.There, to a frenzied soundtrack, McCartney’s post-confinement women stomped ferociously aroundFull Moon Circle, an imposing planetary Richard Long work that resembles austere moonstone. The spectacle evoked images of paganism, like some Mother Nature–worshipping séance for our post-pandemic environmental awakening. If witchcraft has historically been loaded with an almighty sense of female-gaze sexuality, McCartney’s collection came full circle.The ribs of a knit top wrapped erotically around the bust like seashells, a theme echoed in prints and bags. Hourglass suiting felt rigorous in its curvaceous lines, with figure-augmenting cutting, like a jaunty, stiffly ruffled miniskirt accompanied by a saharienne jacket. Skimpy lace-insert lingerie dresses were roughly patchworked together, seams bursting out of their construction. “I think it’s important to invest more in timeless materials, but at the same time you can really inject freshness. It shouldn’t be dull,” McCartney said, referring to those dresses—“completely recycled” from overstock—as an example of the “Tfor ‘timeless,’” which is part of her sustainability strategy.Whether a dress like that can ever be timeless is, perhaps, in the wardrobe of the beholder. But the notion of trendlessness is a thought-provoking one.
In seasons to come, it will be interesting to see if McCartney and the increasingly eco-conscious post-pandemic industry as a whole will implement those ideas on a bigger level—next to the sustainable measures her brand pioneers so well.
8 October 2020
Greeting us this morning at the Opéra Garnier was a barnyard’s worth of people in animal costume. A bunny rabbit, a dog, a black-and-white cow, and a few others handed out baby trees to Stella McCartney’s guests, explaining that planting them will help offset the carbon dioxide produced by the designer’s show. “We should all be carbon-neutral now,” read the stamps on the paper bags that held the trees’ root balls. Later, they made a finale lap with McCartney’s models, a visual reminder that her collections are animal-free—and that it feels good to smile and have a laugh.This Paris Fashion Week has felt deadly serious at times, with the threat of the coronavirus behind every cough and sneeze. The sustainability conversation that fashion has lately engaged in so earnestly has more or less been pushed to the side, replaced by talk of how not to get sick, and of how bad the virus could be for the industry.Essential to McCartney’s appeal is the fact that she’s never taken fashion too seriously. Her clothes are rarely overwrought, and she always puts an emphasis on ease. That held true here—from the officer’s coat that opened the show to the pajama and caftan shapes that closed it. A special collaboration with the archives of Erté, the fashion illustrator of the 1920s, gave her the opportunity to add whimsy via prints and embroideries while retaining the unfussed appeal of her relaxed silhouettes. The jellyfish motif was especially charming in that it linked the collection’s almost opulent flair to the designer’s long-held passion for animals.McCartney is particularly well-placed to serve the growing cohort of consumers who are looking for alternatives to animal by-products. As she posted on Instagram earlier, her brand has been leather-, fur-, and feather-free since 2001. This season, she really played up those bona fides, accessorizing many of the looks with earrings, brooches, and necklaces in the shapes of wild animals. She also boosted the amount of vegan leather in the collection. If customers are willing to spend on a coat made from a laser-cut leather substitute what they might’ve spent on the real thing, it could prove to be a breakthrough, not just for her label, but also the industry. No wonder that cow was prancing his way down the runway.
2 March 2020
Stella McCartney is a force of fashion. Her pioneering, environmentally conscious practice has given the industry luxury laced with mindfulness. “Don’t we know that fashion is trying to bring beauty into the world?” she asked. “But at the same time we’re trying to bring the utility side, the wearable side, and real honesty into the conversation on how we can be more one with all the world around us, trying to meet our passion, bringing people together. It really comes from the heart.”The act of dressing has so many layered meanings; and even if we’re questioning consumerism, overproduction, and all the damage fashion is inflicting on the planet, clothes remain powerful vectors of emotions and memories. They have the power to cheer us up, to soothe and seduce. “That’s why I wanted to bring the emotional side back into the collection,” McCartney said, “and have moments of preciousness, eccentricity, and little extra touches that make you feel special.”McCartney’s clothes are great not just because of all the sustainable game-changing thinking that goes into them. They express a progressive point of view, creatively balanced between femininity and practicality, glamour wearability, playfulness and British cool. “At Stella, we are actually a lot women designing for women, and there’s a lot of reasoning which goes into the sourcing and the making,” she said, offering this as a way of explanation for why people would choose her label.Pre-fall offered plenty of reasons to chose Stella. Outerwear looked great, with a play on voluminous sculptural proportions, on trapeze and cape-like cuts, and with an emphasis on details, like a sexy black faux-leather trench coat with a detachable punched and scalloped collar with a romantic-tough edge. Other little touches included the rounded mismatched buttons playfully fastening a needle-punched citycoat in blown-up herringbone and the long, trailing faux-leather fringes gracing the sleeves of a roomy, sculptural camel coat, giving a sense of eccentric dynamism. It made for quite a dramatic statement.A range of sustainable materials added eco-conscious value as well as creative oomph: organic cotton, sustainable viscose, recycled nylon and polyester, sustainable viscose and wool, regenerated cashmere, and vegan leather. New additions included Koba Fur-Free-Fur, a recycled and recyclable plant-based material that is so far the most sustainable animal-free fur ever made.
It was used for a white herringbone-patterned coat that felt heavenly soft to the touch. Sustainable denim was proposed in a new version called Coreva, the first bio-degradable stretch denim created from plant-based yarns, free from plastic and replacing commonly used petrol-based elastomers.The same conscious approach was obviously extended to the men’s line, where workwear-inspired yet polished tailoring could be shared in a common wardrobe and worn either by a man or a woman. “I remember that my mom and my dad shared a wardrobe when I was young,” she said. “I find it inspiring—and I’ve always borrowed from men.”
14 January 2020
Stella McCartney hosted a sustainability roundtable late last night in advance of her Spring 2020 show this morning. Amber Valletta, the veteran model and McCartney’s friend, said something that sticks in the mind: “We are perpetuating [a] bulimia of buying, using, and throwing away.” Valletta was talking about the collective fawning we do over celebrities in one-off looks, but it applies beyond the red carpet to all aspects of the fashion business.A perfect storm formed by the U.N.’s reports, global warming–related natural disasters, and young Greta Thunberg’s activation of an entire generation has woken us up to our role in an impending climate catastrophe. Now high fashion is in the midst of an existential crisis. What should we create when we need to stop consuming so much? Should we keep making new things at all? Experts like the environmental scientist Vaclav Smil warn that continuous material growth is impossible; eventually, Mother Earth will throw up her hands and yell: “Stop!”In 10 years, maybe less, the industry will operate in radically different ways because it must. For now, newly part of the LVMH fold and an adviser to Bernard Arnault, McCartney is using her not insignificant platform to activate people in her own way. Spring 2020, according to her press notes, is her most sustainably made collection yet, with more than 75 percent of materials being eco-friendly. Fashionably speaking, it was trademark McCartney, spanning Savile Row tailoring and utilitarian sportswear, including some cool acid-washed denim and an array of easy summer dresses.Many of the pieces were constructed using the circle, a symbol not just of the earth but also of the feminine. This was most apparent on a black-and-white–striped top whose stripes clashed directions, but it was also noticeable on a skirt made from two circles of fabric stitched together, producing a curved waistline, and on blouses with scalloped sleeves that created a capelike shape. The technique gave the clothes their relaxed, sensuous silhouettes, which is as much a brand signature as the minimal power suits. Those McCartney showed mismatched—a camel blazer with kelly green culottes—to keep the mood playful. As serious as her environmental messaging has become, the designer’s aesthetic has always been about optimism and uplift. For good vibes and a responsible shopping rush, the flower-print dress banded in bright orange piping will be hard to beat.
30 September 2019
It goes without saying that Stella McCartney is a passionate nature lover, so what better way to have a conversation with her than in a lush, quiet garden in Milan’s city center, surrounded by magnolias, wisterias climbing around trees, and chirping birds? “Let’s just forget fashion for a moment and savor all the natural beauty around us and talk about flowers!” she said. Flowers were actually very much part of her Resort collection, which she named Forces For Nature. Hand-drawn bouquets were printed on light cloqué summer dresses in delicate tones of peony, wisteria, and primrose, as if they had just been picked up in a field or in a bluebell wood in spring, during one of the weekends she loves to spend in the countryside with her family. “It’s always the best time,” she said.It also goes without saying that McCartney isn’t afraid of challenges: “I’m a big believer in change,” she said. “When something is getting too comfortable, I tend to feel uncomfortable.” Her company is undergoing a sort of mutation, becoming independent after having being part of the Kering Group for so many years. It’s an energizing time for the designer—her pioneering work on sustainable fashion has set the bar high for the industry, not only helping to raise awareness but also showing that sustainability and a healthy business can go together. For Resort, her approach has become more overt: “Normally you don’t see what we do in terms of manufacturing conscientiousness,” she explained. “All the efforts we make in doing what we do are in the product, not on the product. This season I wanted to make it more visible.”EnterEverything Is Illuminated’s best-selling author Jonathan Safran Foer, who, feeling a kindred spirit in McCartney, sent her his bookEating Animalsa few years ago. “I was blown away,” she said. A friendship ensued and now a collaboration, which has been years in the making. Safran Foer has a new book calledWe Are The Weatherwhich will be out in September: “So I said to Jonathan, ‘Why don’t I put into fashion what it is you’re putting into words?” Together they came up with the round pattern of a sun, which became Resort’s distinctive print: “It’s the circular weather, it’s the clouds, it’s the rain; the sun is breathing, blowing wind,” said McCartney. “But it’s also a little bit trippy, a little bit ’90s, a sort of dance-trance vibe.”
15 June 2019
It goes without saying that Stella McCartney is a passionate nature lover, so what better way to have a conversation with her than in a lush, quiet garden in Milan’s city center, surrounded by magnolias, wisterias climbing around trees, and chirping birds? “Let’s just forget fashion for a moment and savor all the natural beauty around us and talk about flowers!” she said. Flowers were actually very much part of her Resort collection, which she named Forces For Nature. Hand-drawn bouquets were printed on light cloqué summer dresses in delicate tones of peony, wisteria, and primrose, as if they had just been picked up in a field or in a bluebell wood in spring, during one of the weekends she loves to spend in the countryside with her family. “It’s always the best time,” she said.It also goes without saying that McCartney isn’t afraid of challenges: “I’m a big believer in change,” she said. “When something is getting too comfortable, I tend to feel uncomfortable.” Her company is undergoing a sort of mutation, becoming independent after having being part of the Kering Group for so many years. It’s an energizing time for the designer—her pioneering work on sustainable fashion has set the bar high for the industry, not only helping to raise awareness but also showing that sustainability and a healthy business can go together. For Resort, her approach has become more overt: “Normally you don’t see what we do in terms of manufacturing conscientiousness,” she explained. “All the efforts we make in doing what we do are in the product, not on the product. This season I wanted to make it more visible.”EnterEverything Is Illuminated’s best-selling author Jonathan Safran Foer, who, feeling a kindred spirit in McCartney, sent her his bookEating Animalsa few years ago. “I was blown away,” she said. A friendship ensued and now a collaboration, which has been years in the making. Safran Foer has a new book calledWe Are The Weatherwhich will be out in September: “So I said to Jonathan, ‘Why don’t I put into fashion what it is you’re putting into words?” Together they came up with the round pattern of a sun, which became Resort’s distinctive print: “It’s the circular weather, it’s the clouds, it’s the rain; the sun is breathing, blowing wind,” said McCartney. “But it’s also a little bit trippy, a little bit ’90s, a sort of dance-trance vibe.”
15 June 2019
The sustainability issue has reached a tipping point. A quick pass through this year’s LVMH Prize showcase is proof of that: Most of the 20 young semifinalists are working with deadstock fabrics and materials that would otherwise be destroyed, or they are generally thinking along more earth-friendly lines. One is even constructing garments out of old airbags.Stella McCartney is an industry leader on this subject—has been for years. But she’s never foregrounded her initiatives on the runway quite like she did today. To start, there was her rainforest conservation project. The idea is to dedicate a tree to a loved one and, in the process, raise awareness of the at-risk Leuser Ecosystem in Indonesia, where many of the 150 million trees cut down each year to make fabric are logged. Love messages were printed on the catwalk, and they are also visible on Instagram via the hashtag #thereshegrows. It’s McCartney’s answer to the Ice Bucket Challenge, only its beneficiaries are elephants, rhinos, orangutans, and tigers.According to a press release, the viscose McCartney uses for her collections is harvested from certified sustainably managed forests in Sweden. But that’s just the beginning of her work around the topic this season. She used strips of vintage tees as if they were yarn to knit a multicolor sack dress, and fabric from previous collections to create the quilted details that decorated the yokes or bodices of easy-to-wear frocks. The show-closing coat pieced together from those past-season materials was a real stunner. Cheeky jewelry, like shoulder-duster earrings made from paperclips and a long necklace embellished with rubber bands, reinforced McCartney’s endeavors around upcycling, as did a monumental woven belt made by the noted textile artist Sheila Hicks.Rounding out her collection, McCartney addressed tailoring of the laidback and more polished variety, from an army surplus all-in-one to a form-fitting blazer tucked into high-waisted cargo pants. Last month, the designer discussed sustainabilityin an interviewwith Vogue Runway’s Emily Farra. “I need a few more colleagues linking my arm,” she said. Her fellow designers should consider this terrific collection an invitation—and a challenge—to join her.
4 March 2019
What is a “good” buy? There’s style, and there is content. Stella McCartney’s work naturally invites interrogations on both fronts, from the way a product looks, through the fiber of its being. At a juncture when we’re becoming more and more disposed to buy less, as McCartney herself advocates, she’s also expanding her proposition for men.If eco-geekiness can become conversational currency amongst men (and why not, when one-upmanship on engineering specs is?), then wearing a pair of McCartney’s Loop sneakers could accelerate a guy’s boasting powers. It’s about the sole, which is attached to the upper via a system of hooks and stitching. It means the components can be separated to recycle (which is a problem with the regular industrial construction), while glue is cut out of the process altogether. What’s the problem with glue? For McCartney, it’s a double whammy, involving either animal bones or harmful solvents. Bye glue, hello Loop. (Named, no doubt after the circular economy which McCartney and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation promote, i.e.: ways of keeping fashion products and their components circulating in a virtuous loop, and out of landfill for as long as possible.)Still, it’s no good proposing eco-sound products and processes if the design result is merely meh. McCartney—now an independent designer again—seemed to be powering up on the seriousness of this collection. As with her women’s Pre-Fall collection, she dedicated this season’s menswear toYellow Submarine, The Beatles’ psychedelic cartoon film, which was born 50 years ago. It’s been digitally remastered recently. “It blew my brains out, seeing it again,” she said. It wasn’t just looking again at the hand-drawn art (her mom, Linda, also an animator, “always had framed cartoon gels on the walls at home when we were kids,” McCartney recalled), it was the message that hit her. “I mean: ‘Love, love, love,’ ‘All Together Now’—the text rolls in the movie in the languages of the world.”The divided state of the world makes it an apposite time for McCartney to dice up some chunks of Beatles iconography from the peace, love, and understanding years. The John, Paul, George, and Ringo prints and badges stitched to coats and shirts, and the Fab Four’s faces on cashmere sweaters were the most obvious usages.
Less prima facie were the colored inserted stripes on trouser legs (replacing militaria with psychedelia), just as they were drawn in the film; the yellow slicker coat; and the beige greatcoat—a fab quotation from the Sergeant Pepper army uniform her dad’s generation co-opted from Portobello market dealers.It was impossible , on a quick appointment, to look inside the labels of all these garments to see how they were made, though news was imparted that a line of single-color cashmere sweaters was made from 100 percent reclaimed fibers (boasting rights: This means clean hands on the issue of desertification that the industry has been implicated in). Further: There’s a customer-advisory Clevercare logo inside Stella McCartney products. It’s an over-to-us set of facts about how to keep clothes in better condition for longer. Tips include Savile Row tailoring wisdom about brushing coats and suits instead of subjecting them to dry cleaning solvents, and washing garments at lower temperatures. Wash your clothes 50 degrees cooler and you use 40 percent less electricity, while the cloth survives longer, and gets just as clean. Geek-fact bonus, there.
19 January 2019
Stella McCartney certainly has no need of boasting family credentials, yet her Pre-Fall collection had a rather touching connection with her personal history. “While I was working on it, my dad and the Beatles relaunched theYellow Submarinemovie in a higher quality, and I went to a screening with my dad,” she said, referring to the 50th anniversary of the extraordinary animation movie. “I saw it with completely fresh eyes and I was blown away by the messaging, like ‘All Together Now’ and ‘All You Need Is Love.’ Modern, ahead of their time, these four young men. I was so inspired.” Well, if there’s a designer who doesn’t have to ask for permission to work on that legacy, it’s definitely her.Feeling, as she explained, that it was time to “come at that family heritage with a different point of view,” McCartney worked on a series of pieces at the heart of the collection directly inspired byYellow Submarine’s visuals.Lucy in the Sky With Diamondspyrotechnics were rendered as colorful patchwork-printed dancers, happily shimmying on fluid silk jacquard shirts; a sensational fur-free-fur Technicolor coat boasted on the back a jacquard portrait of the Fab Four in their marching uniforms. What mostly intrigued McCartney, though, was the modernity of the movie’s and lyrics’ message; she had sweaters embroidered withAll Together Nowin multiple languages: “I think it’s so relevant to now, bringing the world together, the people together, breaking down barriers,” she said. “It’s a political conversation, too; we can bring that back to the forefront in a way.”The whole collection was tinged with a personal, almost emotional feel; the designer also mined her parents’ fashion archive for inspiration. She did it with a delicate, loving hand. Linda McCartney’s distinctive ’70s, romantic style was referenced in long, flowing dresses in silk georgette with billowing sleeves and in a gorgeous ankle-grazing circle skirt with matching cape-shirt in flame red plissé. Paul McCartney’s flair for country style was celebrated in a series of quintessentially British, neatly tailored yet utilitarian coats in beautiful tweeds and Prince of Wales wools. A trenchcoat in dry checked wool was double-breasted and classic at the front, while the back boasted a swinging play of pleats; it summarized the constant conversation between masculine and feminine inherent to Stella McCartney’s style vocabulary, a dichotomy smartly blended into a thoughtful, modern combination of glamour and ease.
14 January 2019
Amid the rash of brand acquisitions this year, Stella McCartney’s narrative is different. In late March, she bought back parent company Kering’s stake in her business, which means that, after 17 years, her label is freshly, fabulously independent. Tygapaw, the Brooklyn-based, Jamaica-born, queer-identifying DJ rapped, “I am what I am,” on the soundtrack at the show today. This was McCartney’s moment to lay out a road map for the future.She took it in stride. There were no big fashion news flashes for next Spring; instead, McCartney took the opportunity to reassert her signature sense of unruffled cool. This goes for her newly hatched menswear, which exists at the intersection of utility and athleisure, and it naturally goes for her women’s as well.Exit one set a playful, sportif tone with its SoulCycle neoprenes in granny’s wallpaper chintz. Ice-skater dresses in pale dip-dyed jersey were athletic and flirtatious in kind. McCartney’s appeal lies in her ability to infuse even her more formal pieces with that carefree spirit. Can a pantsuit be laid-back? In McCartney’s hands, yes it can. This season’s were cut in boxy “boyfriend” silhouettes in linen or sustainable viscose.Her real emphasis here seemed to be on elevating what we think of as comfort clothes. Think: tie-dye tees, tie-dye jeans, denim boilersuits, and a recycled nylon shell suit with zips on the legs to adjust the volume (her silk slips had a similar functionality). The eveningwear with its trapeze shapes could’ve doubled as nighties. And a Lurex floral long dress read as likewise relaxed, thanks to its generous sleeves and the ballet slippers Rianne Van Rompaey padded out in. All of this was well-judged. Considering current events, there’s a collective feeling that we need all the comfort we can get. Clothes won’t solve our troubles, but McCartney’s could definitely make life more pleasurable.
1 October 2018
Stella McCartney presented her men’s and Resort collections in Milan with a party at a beautiful garden hidden in the city center. Whimsical paper lamps were strung from trees and pizza was served from street carts, while models played table tennis or lawn bowling or chatted with guests. It was a charming setting, and the collections were delightful, too.“Resort is a celebration of all things Stella McCartney and of the constant journey to make the industry more mindful and responsible and more sustainable,” the designer said during a preview. All her classic elements were here: the play between the masculine and the feminine, the sporty and the street, the country and the city—all blended with a lightness of touch and a romantic attitude.Long white dresses in broderie anglaise or dainty lace were inspired by antique linens, paired with Skin-Free-Skin jackets or shirts embellished with delicate eyelet cutouts. The masculine side played out with plenty of tailored options. A bold photographic print of a moonrise graced a fluid yet sporty pantsuit in sustainable high-shine viscose, while a fringed top peeked out from a dark tailored blazer worn with slouchy palazzo pants. It exuded a sexy, free attitude; Stella’s girls always have an edge. The signature Stella jumpsuit came in crisp cotton. “You can just throw it on and wear it from day to night, to the office or for a walk in the park or to a club; you can even get married in it!” mused McCartney, highlighting the versatility of her design and also her unconventional spirit.The sustainable emphasis was particularly evident in the shoe design. The label’s research department came up with a clear non-PVC material for the first time, which was made into masculine lace-ups or studded high-heel sandals. Since animal glue isn’t used here, shoes were built with just stitching, so they can be dismantled and the sole biodegraded. Kudos to McCartney to playing this game so forcefully, and so gracefully.
19 June 2018
Stella McCartney presented her men’s and Resort collections in Milan with a party at a beautiful garden hidden in the city center. Whimsical paper lamps were strung from trees and pizza was served from street carts, while models played table tennis or lawn bowling or chatted with guests. It was a charming setting, and the collections were delightful, too.“My menswear is rooted in British tailoring,” said McCartney during a preview. “There’s always this juxtaposition of the masculine with the feminine and of the sport, the street, the city.” All was blended together quite effortlessly: “There’s a nod to the music coming out in the ’90s from London and Manchester,” she continued. “Mixed with this way of wearing tailoring, which is almost ’60s and ’70s England, so classic and with Savile Row exactitude but really with a twist.”Although the collection’s spirit was one of sophisticated bohemia, it looked quite modern: “It’s really important to me that the menswear is really wearable. I don’t want to see men dressed in lots of the ways I see them on the catwalks; it’s just not my spirit. The man who chooses my designs has a level of confidence and effortlessness, but he’s undone and has a lightness to him and a sense of humor; he’s very comfortable in his own skin. He’s also very mindful and conscious about how to consume, so he can come to us because right now there isn’t really a brand men can go to to be fashionable and sustainable.”The feel of the collection was definitely balanced, with, for example, the rebellious rock ‘n’ roll spirit of a sharply cut black tuxedo smoothed by a dash of chic. And there was a delicate feel and a subtlety in the tiny decorations embroidered on the collar of a crisp striped poplin shirt, “like going back to the Beatles going to Maharishi,” as the designer highlighted. When military references were in evidence, like in pressed stirrup pants with sporty stripes on the sides, they were handed lightly. “There’s just a little elevation here, but nothing too trying or ridiculous,” she remarked.” The Stella McCartney man is comfortable enough with himself without having to try being fashionable”.
19 June 2018
One of most profound fashion shifts of the past decade has been the elevation of the humble sneaker and the subsequent normalization of it as the “right shoe” for just about everything. Not just track pants and blue jeans, but actually everything—from natty suits to slip dresses. Stella McCartney has been in on the movement from the early days—her partnership with Adidas dates all the way back to 2005. For Fall at her eponymous label, she’s doubled down on the look; her show notes revealed that her new Loop trainers are made with specially designed hooks and stitching to avoid the use of toxic glues. She’s designed them in Alter Nappa (aka faux leather) and knit iterations, and styled them, as we said, with everything, tailoring and maxi dresses included.McCartney’s woke approach to sustainability, especially her animal-free policy, is her biggest contribution to the fashion of today, followed closely by her commitment to practical chic. The Stella effect, let’s call it, can be observed at brands up and down the price spectrum. Now there are reports that the designer is buying back parent company Kering’s 50 percent stake in her label. If anything, it signals a confidence on her part in the future prospects of her business.Cast against those headlines, this show came off somewhat low-key, though all of her signatures were present and correct. Suiting and lingerie formed the foundation of the collection, just as they did when McCartney emerged from Central Saint Martins in the mid-’90s, only now her approach is less traditional, with layers of deconstruction and trompe l’oeil. The knits, always an important element, called to mind classic Coogi sweaters or were built on classic Aran patterns gone askew. Shrouded in lace-trimmed tulle, the J.H. Lynch painting prints she showed for evening (with sneakers, naturally) were striking but rather reminiscent of a recent Fall collection from Prada. Clothes-wise, the news here was the fact that McCartney combined her women’s and one-year-old men’s collections on the runway for the first time, and that the menswear more than held its own.
5 March 2018
“It’s a Stella-bration!” whooped Stella McCartney, sipping Champagne in between sets at the Hollywood concert thrown in honor of her Autumn—the brand’s name for Pre-Fall—men’s and women’s collections. McCartney always does a good pre-collections party, but even for her, last night was a doozy. Not only did St. Vincent, Beck, Grimes, Leon Bridges, and Børns play to a sweaty room stuffed with celebrities, pop stars, and their progeny, but her father, Sir Paul McCartney, walked the red carpet with Ringo Starr, before joining Matt Bellamy and his one-night-only Beatles cover outfit, Dr. Pepper’s Jaded Hearts Club Band, on the elaborately neon-festooned stage to belt out “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Helter Skelter.” By the time you read this, you’ve probably already seen it on Instagram.With all the hubbub, it was hard to focus on the clothes, or even find them, though perhaps that was also because the gangs of models clustered in the space—SIR Studios, a 50-year-old instrument rental and recording institution—almost disappeared into the set design, like ghosts of the studio’s rock heyday. “I think everything I do will probably, without me even trying, relate to rock ’n’ roll,” McCartney explained. That came through in a series of experiments with an old favorite: animal prints, for both men and women—blown up on fuzzy knitwear, blurred to look like camouflage, or layered over houndstooth checks. This was only the second time McCartney has shown her men’s and women’s collections together, and the format was underscored by another prominent work of neon: a large, flashing Time’s Up logo. “I have two sons and two daughters, and I really just want them to not even know what Time’s Up is,” she said.Both collections also featured zany, graphic pieces in red, black, and white, like zigzag knits and silks, and coats with enormously scaled words woven into the fabric. Elsewhere, a set of deconstructed lace-inset slip dresses in sherbet hues telegraphed a with-the-band dreaminess, while the guys on the opposite side of the stage sported tailoring with a Fab Four feel. The accessories, as per usual, packed plenty of razzle-dazzle, particularly a bag and scarf with a groovy retro graphic readingNo Smile No Service.The other strand in McCartney’s DNA is, of course, her environmentalist bent.
This season, in addition to her signature vegan furs and leathers and a special recycled nylon, she’s introducing a more sustainable range of eyewear and a new sneaker for both men and women, the fully recyclable Loop trainer, assembled with tiny internal hooks instead of toxic glue (the on-trend sock knit style also happens to eliminate cutting waste). It’s details like these that prove McCartney’s commitment to changing the industry is serious—even if her presentations are serious fun.
17 January 2018
“It’s a Stella-bration!” whooped Stella McCartney, sipping Champagne in between sets at the Hollywood concert thrown in honor of her Autumn—the brand’s name for Pre-Fall—men’s and women’s collections. McCartney always does a good pre-collections party, but even for her, last night was a doozy. Not only did St. Vincent, Beck, Grimes, Leon Bridges, and Børns play to a sweaty room stuffed with celebrities, pop stars, and their progeny, but her father, Sir Paul McCartney, walked the red carpet with Ringo Starr, before joining Matt Bellamy and his one-night-only Beatles cover outfit, Dr. Pepper’s Jaded Hearts Club Band, on the elaborately neon-festooned stage to belt out “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Helter Skelter.” By the time you read this, you’ve probably already seen it on Instagram.With all the hubbub, it was hard to focus on the clothes, or even find them, though perhaps that was also because the gangs of models clustered in the space—SIR Studios, a 50-year-old instrument rental and recording institution—almost disappeared into the set design, like ghosts of the studio’s rock heyday. “I think everything I do will probably, without me even trying, relate to rock ’n’ roll,” McCartney explained. That came through in a series of experiments with an old favorite: animal prints, for both men and women—blown up on fuzzy knitwear, blurred to look like camouflage, or layered over houndstooth checks. This was only the second time McCartney has shown her men’s and women’s collections together, and the format was underscored by another prominent work of neon: a large, flashing Time’s Up logo. “I have two sons and two daughters, and I really just want them to not even know what Time’s Up is,” she said.Both collections also featured zany, graphic pieces in red, black, and white, like zigzag knits and silks, and coats with enormously scaled words woven into the fabric. Elsewhere, a set of deconstructed lace-inset slip dresses in sherbet hues telegraphed a with-the-band dreaminess, while the guys on the opposite side of the stage sported tailoring with a Fab Four feel. The accessories, as per usual, packed plenty of razzle-dazzle, particularly a bag and scarf with a groovy retro graphic readingNo Smile No Service.The other strand in McCartney’s DNA is, of course, her environmentalist bent.
This season, in addition to her signature vegan furs and leathers and a special recycled nylon, she’s introducing a more sustainable range of eyewear and a new sneaker for both men and women, the fully recyclable Loop trainer, assembled with tiny internal hooks instead of toxic glue (the on-trend sock knit style also happens to eliminate cutting waste). It’s details like these that prove McCartney’s commitment to changing the industry is serious—even if her presentations are serious fun.
17 January 2018
Here’s the question with Stella McCartney: How much is the fashion-consuming public prepared to judge desirable style as something that is conditional on its content? McCartney sees a time fast coming when the habit of checking the label of a garment before purchasing will be “no different from looking at food labeling.” Her press release about this season’s menswear collection notes that the range is “made from 67 percent sustainable materials,” and there are a couple of boggle-worthy developments in the listing. For one: “non-toxic” trainers, made without glue. “It’s truly groundbreaking design, tech, innovation all together—and that’s what I think is luxury now,” she says. “It took us a year and a half to develop the technique, which is a long time in the trainer sector. We figured out how to slot it together like pieces of a jigsaw, with light stitching. I’d liken it more to designing a car.” And why the elimination of glue? “Bones go into glue making, horse hooves. It’s goddamn horrible. A horror show.”If there is a shift in consciousness toward putting value on cleaner, ethical, cruelty-free fashion, it’s McCartney more than any other designer who’s behind it. Often she does her educational pushing incrementally, almost by stealth; in this collection something called “Alter suede” is casually dropped into the convention, for instance. It’s what the fringed western jacket and moccasins are made of. What’s that? “Well, developing it probably cost us more than using real suede or leather, with all the rigorous testing, so it seemed wrong to call it fake.” Result: a new cool-sounding name for an alternative synthetic.Lately, though, McCartney has been going for a bang-up public statement of intent. In November she teamed up with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to “call on the entire industry, brands, and customers to come together andfundamentally change the system. After putting herself behind the mission to create a low-waste, less damaging circular textiles economy, how can the launch of yet more clothing be justified? “I think it’s about timeless pieces with a tiny twist. Hopefully something you’ll keep and wear for a long time. Not too much fashion.”The long-term investments here? Probably it’s the suits, which have the certifiable stamp of Stella McCartney about them, a definite his ’n’ hers relationship with her womenswear collection.
There’s a constructed tailored jacket, harking back to her days of training on Savile Row, paired with high-waisted, voluminous trousers with deep pleats. “I like that contrast between masculine and feminine, something framing the upper torso,” she says, “then kicking it all off-kilter with a sandal. I never want anything too uptight.”
14 December 2017
The invitation to Stella McCartney’s show came with a roll of “trashion bags,” recyclable bin liners with the designer’s logo printed on them made of “recycled linear low density polyethylene.” McCartney has long sent her invite with a little tchotchke: charming but, more often than not, plastic. The recyclable bags are more on message with her low-impact, green-leaning ethos. Fashion show invitations should be strictly digital in 2017, but this was a gesture in the right direction. As was the announcement today that she’s entered into a strategic relationship with the luxury online resale destination The Real Real to foster future consignment and “re-commerce” of products she designs. McCartney is creating a lot of good will around her.It’s satisfying to report that she doubled down on her eco commitments on the runway, as well. McCartney was an early believer in the viability of faux leather in the designer market. For years, her endeavors in this area were mostly reserved for bags and shoes, but this time around she used the material—Skin-Free Skin, she calls it—for clothes, and it was surprisingly supple-looking on pieces like a clingy black twist-front top and a pair of caramel-colored trousers with the loose, relaxed fit of sweats.In the high-stakes Paris fashion world, McCartney’s collections have occasionally been critiqued as not ambitious enough or overly basic. One need only look around these days to see that the kind of sophisticated ease she specializes in is trending. Walking out of the show, a well-respected consultant confirmed as much when she remarked how happy retailers must be when they see something they know they can sell right now. Complex simplicity on the runway is one thing, but in real life, straight-up simplicity often works best. Some pieces that are likely to be on their order sheets: the oversize flight suit in washed cotton, the ruffled trapeze dresses in colorful African prints, and deconstructed evening looks that combined boxy tees and taffeta ball skirts.
2 October 2017
Putting it mildly, it’s somewhat against accepted British culture for a woman to start boldly eyeing boys up and down in an alleyway outside a London pub. Irrelevant as that may be to the photographs here, that was the impulse when a few of the outfits were glimpsed the other night at Stella McCartney’s menswear launch, in an un-renovated public house tucked away behind Hatton Garden, the centuries-old haunt of the jewelry trade. Suffice it to say, the personal inspection couldn’t be completed that forensically, what with shyness and a thicket of Stella’s friends soon intervening. The hostess had a tip for what to look out for, though. “Go see the double-breasted suit jacket! I took it straight from my dad!”The Paul McCartney jacket—now part of a Glen plaid suit with narrow trousers—may originally have been made by Edward Sexton, with whom Stella did an internship on Savile Row when she was at Central Saint Martins, experience that means she has not come to her menswear collection without knowledge. The camel overcoat in the collection seemed to have been patterned after the same sort of establishment template, as well as a few other substantial tweed coats (one with Prince of Wales sleeves) and a duffle. There was a lot else going on, too, in a collection she had shot on very young men, but which is surely is aimed at a cross section of the fashion-interested. Just as in her womenswear, knits were a strength—especially the boxy, oversize cardigans—and quite forgiving, although the narrow-leg pants with two horizonal zippered pockets were surely something which only someone extremely lithe could get away with. Sure enough, the lads outside the pub were wearing them.
11 June 2017
Alec Baldwin and Chris Rock attended Stella McCartney’s Resort presentation and party last night; the real superstars in attendance, however, were Parley for the Oceans’s Cyrill Gutsch and Sea Shepherd’s Captain Paul Watson. Using Parley’s trademarked Ocean Plastic yarn and fabric made from upcycled plastic debris found in the sea, McCartney has designed a new Adidas Ultra Boost sneaker and a limited-edition backpack that will benefit Sea Shepherd’s conservation efforts on its 40th anniversary. The timing was just about perfect: Today is World Oceans Day, and as the messaging at the presentation pointed out, the seas have never been in greater peril. For instance, did you know that there’s an island of plastic floating in the Pacific the size of Russia, and on that island of refuse, plastic bits outnumber wildlife by six to one? Scary, scary stuff.Nonetheless, the mood at McCartney’s party was typically breezy. Ky-Mani Marley (son of Bob) played reggae; a quartet of parrots posed for Instagram shots; and miracle of miracles, the sun came out. The designer’s clothes look great in this kind of atmosphere; she makes special things with a winning sense of ease. Take the trio of colorful tropical-print dresses. They were overembroidered and deconstructed at the shoulder or around the waist in ways that, as McCartney put it, “reveal a bit of life and spirit.” Balancing exuberant volumes and body consciousness was the name of the game, whether it was an oversize upcycled cashmere sweater with a drawstring hem or generously proportioned jeans cinched by a paper-bag waist. A brick red pantsuit captured a similar kind of exuberant restraint. McCartney reprised theAll Is Loveslogan from her Spring ’17 collection on men’s-style shirting. It’s going to take a great deal more than that to save us, still it’s a nice place to start. We’re seeing designers responding to the environmental crisis and other global catastrophes in vocal ways in 2017, but McCartney was one of the originators.
8 June 2017
Stella McCartney has built joie de vivre into her brand DNA, so it only makes sense that she would reprise the surprise hit karaoke dance party from last season at her show today. This time the models sang George Michael’s “Faith,” “All You Need Is Love” by papa Paul and his fellow Beatles, and “Brujas” by Princess Nokia, which features the unforgettable lyrics “Don’t you fuck with my energy.”McCartney knows a good thing when she hears one. Likewise, she has her design signatures and she sticks with them season after season. Savile Row–inflected tailoring? For Fall, it’s waist-conscious yet slightly oversize, and she likes the look of a bare-legged coatdress. Sexy athleticism? McCartney was putting tracksuits on her runways before it became standard practice, but if you’re in the market for a new one, she’s got it in surplus green covered with zips. Horseplay? Yep, that, too. A lifelong equestrian, McCartney used illustrations of horses in one of her Chloé collections and they reemerged today, only this time with a more upper-crusty vibe. A quilted barn jacket and silk scarf knotted just so below the chin gave us Claire Foy’s young Queen Elizabeth II inThe Crown.Her main idea for evening was to layer embroidered tulle shifts over short solid-colored knits or hardworking trousers. The surprise here was the retro conical bras she layered underneath sheer plissé evening pieces and added as a detail on everything from a camel jumpsuit to a short plaid shift. They’ll be divisive. But there’s no resisting the uplift of that closing sing-along.
6 March 2017
“I’ve always dreamed of going to the Cotton Club.” Stella McCartney was perfectly blunt about how her Pre-Fall event came together. “I just wanted to have a party here.” And some Tuesday night it was, complete with a performance from surprise guest Alicia Keys, singing “Empire State of Mind,” and celebrity sightings in the form of the Seinfelds, Sean Lennon, andJulianne Moore. McCartney has made these biannual preseason happenings a calling card. She’s a feel-good designer, and that goes as much for her clothes as it does for her famous shindigs.The new collection, as McCartney put it, was noteworthy for its variety. But whether it was a pajama set printed with characters from the British comicThe Dandyor a clingy argyle sweaterdress that fell just below the knee, all of it had that trademark McCartney ease. There were head-to-toe knit looks and a head-to-toe denim one, and she showed high-rise, easy-fit jeans with an elongated blazer and square-toe loafers featuring cutaway heels, unfussy and cool in the extreme. On her runway last season, McCartney really owned her anti-leather and anti-fur stance, printing athletically inclined separates with her position on the subject. Here, a “Fur-Free Fur” patch was implanted at the wrist of a roomy faux fur coat.But we were at the Cotton Club, so it wasn’t all casually minded daywear, Savile Row–inflected suiting, and shaggy-chic outerwear. A sleeveless red dress and a boxy red jacket both shimmied with silk fringe, and a long red trapeze frock in cotton lace had a low-key kind of glamour, which, of course, is another McCartney signature. It was also present in a couple of pairs of cropped pants with deep hems of fluff.
11 January 2017
There’s a lot to say about whatStella McCartneygot up to in London on November 10. During the day, she was previewing her debut menswear collection and her Pre-Spring 2017 womenswear at a Methodist chapel she’d hired just across the street from the Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles recorded their album of the same name in 1969. She mentioned, in passing, that she was going to have “a party” at the studios later. Turned out, it was more of a mini-Glastonbury of a night, with DJ sets and live performances on two stages from the Beastie Boys, Beth Ditto, Neneh Cherry, Professor Green, Sharleen Spiteri, and more. A very relaxed, very British-music and fashion-friends-and-family affair it was.This is the way Stella rolls these days. Springing surprise happenings on people, as she did in Paris last month, rehearsing models to break into a dance routine at the end of her runway show, is one of McCartney’s humanizing talents. Making fashion fun to be around, less icy, less pretentiously distant, and part of normal life is essential to her subliminal brand value. This time the models were standing around with everyone else, eating pizza served from Stella McCartney boxes.But to the clothes. Earlier in the day, McCartney was talking about the menswear presentation. “It’s something I started thinking about eleven years ago, when I launched the Adidas collection and a guy came up to me and said, ‘Would you do that for men?’ ” she said. “That definitely planted a seed.” Her choice of location begged the obvious question: How much of the collection was related to the influence of her father, Sir Paul McCartney? Answer: bits and pieces, but not all that much. She pointed to a blue shirt embroidered with swallows. “It was mum’s, but then I saw a picture of dad wearing it.” A blue organic denim embroidered shirt was inspired by an earlier Beatles-era snap. “It was more the Maharishi phase. He was wearing it over a formal English shirt.” Another obvious question: Did her husband Alasdhair Willis have any input? “No,” she laughed, though Willis did wear her black boxy-jacketed suit with draped tailored cargo pants to her last show. “We keep our work separate! But I want Al to wear it, my dad to want to wear it, my sons, and my friends.” On offer: everything from short mackintosh raincoats and Prince of Wales check overcoats, to workwear carpenter pants, to spoof football scarves and nu-raveyMembers and Non Members Onlyslogan T-shirts.
11 November 2016
There’s a lot to say about whatStella McCartneygot up to in London on November 10. During the day, she was previewing her debut menswear collection and her Pre-Spring 2017 womenswear at a Methodist chapel she’d hired just across the street from the Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles recorded their album of the same name in 1969. She mentioned, in passing, that she was going to have “a party” at the studios later. Turned out, it was more of a mini-Glastonbury of a night, with DJ sets and live performances on two stages from the Beastie Boys, Beth Ditto, Neneh Cherry, Professor Green, Sharleen Spiteri, and more. A very relaxed, very British-music and fashion-friends-and-family affair it was.This is the way Stella rolls these days. Springing surprise happenings on people, as she did in Paris last month, rehearsing models to break into a dance routine at the end of her runway show, is one of McCartney’s humanizing talents. Making fashion fun to be around, less icy, less pretentiously distant, and part of normal life is essential to her subliminal brand value. This time the models were standing around with everyone else, eating pizza served from Stella McCartney boxes.But to the clothes. Earlier in the day, McCartney was talking about the menswear presentation. “It’s something I started thinking about eleven years ago, when I launched the Adidas collection and a guy came up to me and said, ‘Would you do that for men?’ ” she said. “That definitely planted a seed.” Her choice of location begged the obvious question: How much of the collection was related to the influence of her father, Sir Paul McCartney? Answer: bits and pieces, but not all that much. She pointed to a blue shirt embroidered with swallows. “It was mum’s, but then I saw a picture of dad wearing it.” A blue organic denim embroidered shirt was inspired by an earlier Beatles-era snap. “It was more the Maharishi phase. He was wearing it over a formal English shirt.” Another obvious question: Did her husband Alasdhair Willis have any input? “No,” she laughed, though Willis did wear her black boxy-jacketed suit with draped tailored cargo pants to her last show. “We keep our work separate! But I want Al to wear it, my dad to want to wear it, my sons, and my friends.” On offer: everything from short mackintosh raincoats and Prince of Wales check overcoats, to workwear carpenter pants, to spoof football scarves and nu-raveyMembers and Non Members Onlyslogan T-shirts.
11 November 2016
The feel-good moment ofParis Fashion Weekcame atStella McCartneythis morning. Her delightful show finished with a dance-off choreographed by Blanca Li and starring the designer’s gorgeous model squad, who whooped, hollered, and shimmied in a collection designed to move in. McCartney has always made the most of her femaleness, creating clothes that work for real life. A longtime vegetarian who neither wears leather or fur nor makes her label in them, she’s gone much further than most brands to reduce her company’s carbon footprint. In a season of slogan T-shirts, she put her passions front and center. Sliced-and-diced oversize tees, dresses, and all-in-ones announced:Girls Thanks, and No Fur, No Leather. In the spirit of the season, she even sent out a couple of stretchy lace evening looks embroidered with her positive messaging; they were charming where some other attempts have felt preachy.A woman can’t live on statement T-shirts alone, of course, and McCartney knows it. There was news on the tailoring front, which made use of corsetry detailing yet didn’t look uptight or constricting, thanks, first, to the cotton fabric she used and, second, the compensating volume she added to the rounded shoulders of jackets and in the generous proportions of her paper bag–waist trousers. A section of blanket dressing kept that relaxed, “I’ve thought about my outfit, but it isn’t the only thing preoccupying me” spirit going, as did the slouchy Ultrasuede jumpsuit and the oversize, patchworked men’s shirts. Points for the denim-look knits, as well. Eagle-eyed observers clocked McCartney’s husband, Alasdhair Willis, rocking a slick double-breasted jacket and trousers with a workwear vibe in the front row. The label inside? Stella McCartney. Her new menswear collection gets its official debut next month.
3 October 2016
“I’m a vegan, bitch!” You can count onStella McCartneyfor a knockout soundtrack. Her show today featured the worldwide exclusive debut of M.I.A.’s new song, “Ola,” but the one that sticks in the brain was the Snaxx tune “Get Yo Tofu On,” from which the above vegan boast was lifted. McCartney is a famous vegetarian and has built a successful accessories business without using leather or other skins. This season her notes proudly announced that her puffer jackets are stuffed with feather-free wadding and that her cropped bombers are made with skin-free skin. In a world clogged with too much stuff, any designer who can produce more of their own without harming animals, and by extension the environment, is onto something.With three days to go in the Fall ’16 season and hundreds of shows come and gone, it’s all too easy to feel overwhelmed by stuff. Come July and into autumn, when these pieces begin arriving in stores, what will rise above the fray? McCartney has an advantage in the game; as a rule she puts an emphasis on ease, which means her clothes are of the kind that are worn and well loved, not superfluous to needs. But today’s show was a bit mixed. She stumbled with the ruffled bib knit dresses with drawstring waists, which erred on the shapeless side. And in repetition, the swan motif came off somewhat juvenile. McCartney is known for her animal novelty prints—for Pre-Fallit was kitties—but a little would’ve gone a longer way here.Elsewhere, though, she had terrific plissé flares that she showed with pointy flats for a look that felt very contemporary. A tie-dyed denim jacket elongated into a dress and cinched up the side with elastic cords was equal parts sporty and sexy. And then there were those puffer jackets. We’ve seen plenty this season, but McCartney did hers in evening-appropriate jewel-toned velvet. It set them apart.
7 March 2016
It wasn’t just the prospect of riding theGolden Globes’s coattails that convincedStella McCartneyto host her Pre-Fall presentation in L.A. instead of New York this year. “Right now [L.A.] is kind of on fire,” the designer said on the red carpet outside Amoeba Records in Hollywood, a scene as star-studded as the recent awards themselves, before pausing to hugKaty Perry. “It’s full of creativity on every level.”So, too, was the collection itself, even if it felt almost beside the point amid the chaos of a surprise rock show (George Harrison’s son, Dhani’s, band, Thenewno2, opened, followed by The Beach Boys, Johnny Depp and Marilyn Manson, and more) and a crowd rubbernecking to watch the likes ofGwyneth Paltrow, Beck, and Mary J. Blige browsing the David Bowie tribute racks.As for the clothes, they had what McCartney called “a slight eclectic feel” that seemed right at home inside the neon-lit, poster-papered setting. A group of animal-pattern coats in McCartney’s “fur-free fur” caught the eye first—an oversize ocelot-print bomber and short-pile faux-leopard coat piped with fluffy panels telegraphed rock ’n’ roll insouciance. The feline theme continued via a kitschy cat-portrait tapestry jacquard—which felt wearable on a wrap skirt, if not on a tailored coat—and a hand-illustrated cat portrait print on a mixed-media, ’70s-style football-jumper blouse and silk dress.Yet despite these and other instances of Instagram-baiting fun, McCartney has always designed sharp pieces for the real world, and the collection offered plenty to satisfy the sort of woman who might have last frequented Amoeba during the era of the compact disc or cassette tape. There was a perfect black pantsuit; dramatic new versions of McCartney’s standby cable-knit sweaters; flouncy asymmetrical separates in striped and spotted silks; and spiral-cut eyelet dresses slashed with diagonal zippers. A voluminous tulle overdress in bright persimmon, layered atop a vintage-lingerie-inspired tank and floral jacquard trousers, looked especially lovely as the model swayed to the music.Still, the accessories were the true crowd-pleasers tonight. A bevy of soon-to-be-It bags included spherical wristlets in the faux animal-print furs, while a giant gremlin ring and charm-bracelet mules upped the whimsy factor even further. The item most likely to incite frenzy? Long-tongued, faux-croc block-heel loafers affixed with giant brass rings that recalled punk piercings. Bowie himself would have rocked them.
13 January 2016
The key to summertime dressing is effortlessness. It’s a principle thatStella McCartneyapplies to all of her collections, and it was in full effect at her upbeat show this morning, where she put a major emphasis on knits. Knitwear has become more visible on Spring runways over the last couple of fashion cycles as innovative, computer-enabled techniques have allowed designers to do things not possible before. There’s another reason sweater dressing is on the rise, and it comes down to the comfort factor. McCartney’s layered tanks, polo shirts, and tube skirts looked stretchy as activewear, sporty and poised for action on the athletic sandals they paraded out on, but elevated in bright stripes, checks, and transparencies. She also played with vibrant, pleated knits in loose trapeze-like shapes with sexy cutaways. It’s been a great week for color in Paris, but McCartney’s as bold as anybody, combining vivid orange and blue or chili red with pink on those knit separates. Swirls of ribbon embroidery made a similarly strong impact on tracksuits and dresses.Her other project here was rethinking the suit, which has been an icon of the brand from the beginning. She did that via deconstruction; a double-breasted black jacket was transformed into a strapless, form-fitting tunic worn over a multi-slit skirt. And she did it by using unexpected materials, as was the case with an off-the-shoulder jacket and slouchy pants cut from raw indigo denim with high-contrast white stitching. More conventional pieces like vests and trousers had an appealing fluidity and elongated proportions.Slip dresses were another key component of her first collection post–Saint Martins nigh on 20 years ago. There’s never been a bigger moment for boudoir dressing than Spring 2016, but McCartney more or less avoided the subject. A missed opportunity? Not really. In acid hues, her swirling eyelet dresses will stand out at stores next spring.
5 October 2015
Stella McCartney practices an optimistic, energetic kind of fashion, but Resort really brings out her sunny side. It's so persuasive that the rain clouds that lingered over New York for the better part of a week broke temporarily for her Elizabeth Street garden party last night. The theme was Cuba; stilt walkers, Latin dancers, and a slew of celebs from Lorne Michaels to Liv Tyler provided the Instagram moments. The money shot, though, was the quartet of models frolicking in McCartney's citrus-hued, ankle-grazing trapeze dresses. You couldn't have found a woman in the crowd who didn't want to be them, or at least look like that for a night. Tailored shirts that descended into sarong-style wraps—as short as the trapeze dresses were long—caught some of that beachy, summery magic. One corner of the garden was devoted to McCartney's florals. The English blooms, as she described them, decorated not just sundresses short and long, but more unexpectedly a navy blue pantsuit. Even the more masculine elements here maintained a certain whimsy factor. A lifelong rider, McCartney covered another pantsuit in a bold, allover horse print. Asymmetric, drapey lapels will give less extroverted types a new reason to add some SMcC tailoring to their closets.
8 June 2015
Nonchalance. It's the defining characteristic of the Stella McCartney aesthetic. She makes no-fuss clothes that don't stint on fun. Simple though that may sound, sit through a month of shows and you'll soon discover it's not such an easy combination to pull off. Few designers have the effortless thing down quite like McCartney does.For Fall, she conjured that easy, breezy feeling from the first look out: a black coat and pants that could have coded dull, but absolutely didn't thanks to the coat's swooshy, handkerchief skirt and the pants' godet hem. She zhuzhed up other trousers with deep cuffs or paper-bag waistbands. Jackets, meanwhile, came with wrapping details at the waist or buttoned askew; stripped of any businesslike connotations, they remained utterly suitable for the office. One-sleeve ribbed knit sweaterdresses that were open at the side pushed the dishabille concept a step too far. But the idea McCartney was trying to get at with this collection—of structured silhouettes unraveling to suggest something more fluid—worked nicely elsewhere. That was especially true for evening separates and dresses on which a single strap spilled suggestively off the shoulder or a fillip of fabric ruffled and peplumed at the hip. Double strands of pearls with a twist at the collarbone echoed the clothes' erotic lines.One other note: In a season that has seen an endless stream of fox, mink, and pelts of all sizes, McCartney deserves a special round of applause for her outrageously good-looking long-haired "fur-free fur" overcoats.
9 March 2015
Humor. Charm. A healthy appreciation of fun. They're Stella McCartney's magic sauce, and they were all on display at her pre-collection party last night. This one was held at the Convent of the Sacred Heart on the Upper East Side, with Kristen Stewart and Chloë Sevigny in the crowd, and for props: ping-pong tables, miniature-golf stations, a cappella singers, and a four-piece band. The good vibes extended to the collection. On the accessories front, McCartney showed glitter backpacks, new versions of her best-selling star platform loafers, and fuzzy hats that all the editors were angling for. The clothes had wit to spare, too. See the metallic wildcat print and the psychedelic weeping willow trees (designed in collaboration with London illustrator Will Sweeney) that decorated otherwise minimal evening separates. Or an out-of-the-ordinary snow-leopard-print coat with oversize metal and plexi disc buttons.McCartney held forth in front of a group of reporters. "I don't want another heather gray knit, I already have a man's jumper," she said, pointing to someone's sweater. "And I don't want a black overcoat. It's about looking at those staples, the pieces we all turn to and need as women, but I want more out of them, I want to say something with my clothes." And so her turtlenecks came ribbed with an orderly row of brass buttons down the front, while a cashmere crewneck had a graceful swirling hem. Elsewhere, of-the-moment kick flares stopped well north of the ankle, the better to show off an oxford-slingback hybrid that McCartney was keen to point out as a personal favorite. They summed up the practical—but with loads of personality—nature of the whole collection.
13 January 2015
This far into the season, shopping lists have started to take shape. Knit dressing, seriously roomy pants, and a military something or other are developing stories. All of them made appearances on Stella McCartney's runway this morning, but she has a knack for making that fact look like happenstance. McCartney is a striver—as a mother of four with an international, multimillion-dollar business, doesn't she have to be? Yet she injects her clothes with an offhand sense of ease. Life's not a breeze, she knows, but dressing for it should be.McCartney has situated her brand at the profitable place where directional and functional meet. Hip-slung sailor pants were cut extra-wide, but not so big you'd trip over your feet. A ribbed knit tunic and calf-length skirt in a gorgeous shade of indigo followed the lines of the body without clinging. They were more graceful than a sweaterdress with cutouts on either side of the waist, and sexier for their subtlety. Most relaxed of all were the parachute silk flight suits and the matching sweeping coats, like slipping into a pair of pastel pajamas and a robe, and staying that way all day. A tempting thought on Day 26 (give or take) of fashion month.Models were unfettered by bags. There were just a handful on the runway, and you got the sense that McCartney would've edited them out altogether if she could've gotten away with it. The effortlessness and fluidity of that notion extended into her evening pieces: not just slipdresses but also separates, in which relaxed shapes and organic prints were spliced with Rorschachs of lace windows. Sexy without trying too hard—exactly the way McCartney likes it.
29 September 2014
Where Stella McCartney goes, the fun follows. Last night, she presented her new collection in Elizabeth Street Garden, a green oasis in the Nolita neighborhood that has recently been threatened by development. No signs of strife yesterday, not with the live band, the statue performers, and an all-star crowd that ranged from Cara Delevingne and Jourdan Dunn to Lorne Michaels and Peter Beard. By the looks of the empty champagne flutes everywhere, people came to party.The designer herself was in an upbeat mood, offering this reporter a lavender margarita before she started riffing on the new collection. "Isn't it nice to get some color back into your life, and print, to just feel alive? I think fashion can be quite restraining for people." Not Stella McCarntney's fashion. With their patchworks of print and stripes, side cutouts, and insets of sunray pleats, the dresses that greeted guests at the entrance were total knockouts. Sexy, but in the best kind of offhand way. We'll be seeing them everywhere for months. "They're inspired by my mum, and by my dad, actually, and by that period of time that was free and easy and not uptight," McCartney explained.She seemed to be making connections between generations. If those collaged dresses were a callback to her parents, the collection's superhero prints looked like they could've been a shout-out to her young children. Flat clutches in the shapes of comic book characters' masks brought out the kids in the crowd last night—the Instagrams were flying. McCartney even took a lighthearted approach to the tailoring that is such an important part of her business, working with slubby fabrics in unexpected colors, adding cutouts here as well, and perching everything on towering platform sandals. Fun all around.
4 June 2014
The key to Stella McCartney's show was the shoes. In their rubber-soled flatform oxfords, the models glided around the Palais Garnier utterly unencumbered. To look at those shoes you wouldn't think they'd be sexy, and yet wearing McCartney's super-short hem lengths or stirrup leggings (those were a surprise!) and sporting those clunky oxfords, the models looked quite fetching. Sexy is a McCartney signature that had lately gone missing. It was good to see it back."We wanted to give our customer the ease and energy and movement we feel she wants from us," McCartney said backstage. First came that footwear, followed by the silhouettes of the clothes, which were borrowed from the worlds of sport and loungewear. It's official: Chunky knit pajama-style pants are one of fall's key trends.The real surprise here was McCartney's emphasis on handwork. Zipper details and mountaineering rope formed squiggly embroidery on boxy jackets and oversize sweaters, reinforcing her points about energy and movement. Other surface treatments, like the shibori technique she used to create tie-dyed color-blocking on a breezy silk dress, or the woven jacquards of softly tailored separates, had an earthy, even tribal feel that jibed with what's been happening on other runways this season. The tiny cocktail dresses McCartney closed with were exuberantly draped in colorful silk cord fringe. They'd be an absolute kick to wear, especially with those easy-on-the-feet shoes.
2 March 2014
Only Stella McCartney can turn a Pre-Fall presentation into a genuine happening. Upstairs at New York's Harold Pratt House last night, models were zinging around in miniature electric cars, playing hopscotch, and dancing to a live band. Downstairs, the designer mingled with the likes of Susan Sarandon, Jerry Seinfeld, Liv Tyler, and Patti Smith. Cool just seems to come naturally to her. Even when she's working hard, she makes it look easy, and that attitude carries over to her clothes. It's one of the major keys to their success.This season, McCartney conjured memories of her oldest sister, who was plucked from London's edgy street scene and relocated to an organic farm in the middle of the countryside not long after McCartney was born. "She was a major punk, hanging out with Steve Strange, Billy Idol. The collection is a mix of the harshness of the urban environment, softened through different mediums." Classic houndstooths were manipulated until they looked almost like the petals of a flower. Fringed woolen jackets wrapped around the body like blankets (one of Pre-Fall's key trends). Streamlined mesh cocktail dresses were adorned with arabesques of fringe. And speaking of cool, the designer turned graphic drawings of female faces and bodies by her friend, the British artist Gary Hume, into intarsias on sweaters and knit dresses. (It would seem that McCartney has always been hooked into the scene.)Everything was immanently wearable, a point she drove home by pairing looks for day and night with menswear loafers.
13 January 2014
Stella McCartney has a lock on stylish-but-not-slavishly-fashionable clothes that work for busy women. A quick glance around the audience at the Opéra Garnier and you saw countless pieces from recent collections. Over here, the washed-out plaids and pinstripes from Fall, over there a dark cape with the scrolling white embroideries of a year before that. Today's show put an emphasis on understatement; it was right there in her program notes—"an accent on understated seduction," it read—which made the front-row hits of the future harder to pick out than usual. With the installment of Raf Simons at Dior, there was talk of a new minimalism in fashion, but the Belgian has somewhat confounded expectations since his appointment. McCartney, on the other hand, is still feeling its pull for Spring, which made this quiet collection feel somewhat out of step with other things that are happening in Paris at the moment.Even so, McCartney did have some worthwhile things to say about suiting and slipdress-ing, two areas where she's been strong since the beginning. Alongside the slouchy, almost unconstructed silk men's jackets and trousers that have become a signature, she proposed a popover top and high-waisted, full-through-the-thigh pants in a dense knit that keyed into her sporty Adidas affiliations. In monochrome black or rosy nude, they'll do the pulled-together work of a suit. On billowy dresses, meanwhile, she played sheer against opaque, slicing them horizontally below the hips and threading them back together with basting stitches. See-through skirts have become a thing this season, but McCartney's interpretation looked fresh and new. She wrapped things up with delicate summer dresses; their patchworks of lace will grab eyeballs in stores. Still, this show felt like a bit of a letdown. McCartney's loyal customers expect more.
29 September 2013
Have you heard aboutThe Girl With the Python Tattoo—the soon-to-be-released best seller by Stella McCartney? No dystopian Swedish scenes or bedeviled vigilantes in this one. For her latest collection, McCartney cast an eye on embellished women and put the spirit into her clothes: She had been "looking at the type of women who would have a snake tattoo," she said at her rainy alfresco presentation today, "and reflecting that into the most beautiful jacquard of a snake."Ironic, maybe, that a collection premised on women unnaturally decorated would put such an emphasis on natural colors and natural materials. (Banish the thought that Stella would ever use actual snake.) But then, it's springtime, and that means fresh new beginnings. "Celebrating women, celebrating a new season," McCartney enthused. "Really bringing a lot of emotion into a collection in a very hopeful, springlike manner." She had a dab-hand with her embossed-snake pieces—a little coatdress here, an oversize bomber there—mixed and matched with seasonal florals. Mannered it may have been, but nothing was overly effortful. Even the shoes were shown with their soft backs stepped on, the ballet slippers literally slipped into.A cocktail section introduced swooping lines of duchesse satin (shown over mini shorts, no less!) and embellishments embroidered and appliquéd. The most fun of these had a surreal scatter of lips and burnt matchsticks. It figures. The girl who submits to the tattooist's art is a girl who plays with fire.
10 June 2013
Stella McCartney's shows are always a dialogue between masculine and feminine. Mannish or womanly, the clothes usually give off a fair bit of heat. Her new collection for Fall wasn't exactly sexless, but it did have a cooler, less come-hither sensibility than usual, which seemed to play against her strengths. It started with banker's pinstripes—the first look a double-breasted jacket with uneven, diagonal hems worn over a long skirt in a thinner stripe with a folded drape in front. More covered-up pinstripes followed: men's coats that topped cropped pants, a buttoned-to-the-collar shirt tucked into pleated trousers, and an unstructured dress extending to the mid-calf. Backstage, the designer talked about "inserting the feminine into masculine," but the models' willowy frames tended to get a bit lost in the clothes. A striped turtleneck sweater shown with a flippy miniskirt felt more like the old Stella.The generous proportions of the menswear extended into polo-neck dresses that more or less fell in loose lines from the shoulders to several inches below the knee. McCartney showed these in fine gauge knits inset with delicate lace, as well as in a gorgeous ultraviolet silk. Sans collars, they came in a peeled-back wallpaper print spelling out SKATE, a print that maybe suggested, like the models' wool baseball caps and the sturdy tire-tread shoes, that she had been looking to the street for ideas. Of everything on the runway today, it was easiest to picture the oversize tartan coats in the real world when the weather turns cold again.Things warmed up some for evening, and there McCartney was thinking along languid and more structured lines. In the former category, simple squares of silk were suspended from wide bands of elastic. In the latter, a lapel spilled down the front of a strapless bustier dress in black silk jacquard, but it couldn't detract from its seductive appeal.
3 March 2013
The most compelling thing about Stella McCartney's pre-collection parties? It's not the promise of celebrity sightings, even if there were plenty of those tonight. And it's not the lure of free Champagne, either, although that was also in abundance at the Americas Society. The really savvy thing is the way McCartney insinuates her models into the crowd. Sure, in head-to-toe looks fresh from the studio, they're the chicest girls in the room, but on the other hand, they almost blend in among the editors and buyers and boldfacers. "Clothes you can wear, that don't wear you" is a cliché, but it's a cliché that fits here, and it's the key to McCartney's success. A year from now, the same editors and buyers and boldfacers will be wearing these clothes in their everyday lives.McCartney's approach to pre-fall: "to address every need of the modern woman's wardrobe." She clearly has a thing for coats, and if they come in brights like red and teal, and with exaggerated proportions, even better. She's also got a feeling for stripes. Wide horizontal bands of black and ivory decorated a silk duchesse dress. The success of her Fall 2012 collection has made pattern a no-brainer. This season, she went with feather jacquards.Her new sustainable optical collection made its debut, but "the real news," according to McCartney, was the eveningwear. "Evening is hard," she said. "It can make you look older, too young—it's very delicate." Her solution: quite strict, classic long-sleeved columns modernized with color-blocking, and one very striking bustier jumpsuit in those graphic stripes.
7 January 2013
"It's a conversation between man and woman, between boldness and fragility," Stella McCartney said of her energetic Spring collection backstage. "The Stella woman is a mix of those elements." And has been since the very beginning. As a young Central Saint Martins graduate in the late nineties, McCartney made a fast impression with her Savile Row-inflected suits and lace-edged slipdresses. Her work these days, of course, is much more nuanced than that early outing, but it connects with her customers because it gets them where they live.The designer played with two central conceits: oversize tailoring and delicate yet still sporty dresses. The tailoring side of the dialogue featured jackets with the bolder shoulders we've seen on other Paris runways, or boxy cuts belted low in back to create blouson silhouettes. Pants were loose and long or full and cropped above the ankle. An organza tracksuit was a reminder of her Olympic summer.McCartney is a hitmaker. This fall, it's been that patchwork tweed cheerleader dress, and the season before it was those clingy mosaic-print minidresses with the arabesques of white embroidery at the neckline. Among this season's plissé organza numbers with graphic splashes of bright color, the winner was a racerback style worn by Anja Rubik, its royal blue mille-feuille organza embroideries bisected by a transparent panel at the midriff. See-through sheers were a constant motif, from the clear plastic minaudières all the way down to the models' easy-to-walk-in Lucite platforms. Like we said, she gets us where we live.
30 September 2012
Gray skies couldn't dampen this afternoon's presentation, the latest in a string of Stella McCartney Resort shows seemingly tailor-made to outdo the one before. For the carnival-themed outing, held alfresco in a Lower East Side cemetery, there were ring tosses, tots with lemonade stands, tests of strength, barbecue grills roaring (this being meatless McCartney, the burgers were black bean), and a New Orleans brass band. Photographers and gawkers couldn't get enough of Anne Hathaway with herLes Mizcrop, but if they did manage to tear their eyes away, they still had Amy Poehler, Emily Mortimer, and Jim Carrey at whom to gape."I love spring, spring's one of my favorite seasons," McCartney said. "It's all about enjoying the new beginning, in a sense. This season I wanted to let it go a little bit." The deep, slightly serious blues of her athletic Fall collection had been traded in for sky blues, chrome yellows, hot pink, and clean, neutral white and linen. The last was a reference, the designer said, to the fact that the collection was inspired by toile and calico—the new beginning of garments, literally.The clothes she put on parade here were variations on the Stella themes. Greta Gerwig proclaimed herself a fan of the oversized blazers, like the men's versions she used to buy in vintage stores—but, she hastened to add, better. An interiors inspiration yielded wallpaper florals and brocades. McCartney's pants, once cropped, came flared, and got even groovier in madras. "This collection was about having standout pieces," Stella said. Hence the series of pretty lace dresses beneath which were layers of drapery fringe. Partiers, prepare. There were other pieces that stood—or stuck—out, but even those did so happily, for the most part. A group of holographic pointy-toed wedges, clutches, and iPad cases hit the holo trend without necessarily seeming here nor there. No matter—the models kicked off their shoes anyway to dance in the damp grass.
10 June 2012
Stella McCartney's on a roll. There's the new store in New York's Soho and a second London boutique opening this week. There's the Olympics, for which she's designing the British team's uniforms. There's the string of recent red carpet coups—an hourglass Kate Winslet comes to mind. And today there was her new collection, which captured how women want to dress now.Backstage McCartney talked about merging city and country, and day and night. "The Stella woman is about balance," she said. After nearly a month of fashion shows, the women in her audience this morning are all craving some of that. Well, sorry, ladies, but you'll have to wait several months to get your hands on the polished yet easy pieces in this collection.Coats are always a highlight at McCartney's Fall shows—you can pass the time waiting for papa Paul to take his seat counting examples from the previous year. The standouts here were a side-zip style with the season's bolder proportions in a vivid blue, and a tailored number with a sporty knit collar and the padded hips we've been seeing all around town. She dressed up her tailoring with graphic, botanical embroideries (white and black on that same vivid blue) or embossed the same pattern on double crepe. Jackets were slightly oversize and pleated pants slouched from the hips.Maybe with an eye to the coming Olympics, McCartney ended her collection on a sporty beat. Long-sleeve dresses with kicky hems were pieced together from stretch tweed and ergonomic blocks of blue and white. Plenty sexy, but more covered-up than her frocks have been lately. Gymnasts? Tennis players? Cheerleaders? They had a cheering section in her front row.
4 March 2012
Stella McCartney rode into town a victor. She's coming off a banner year, where there was barely a red carpet without one of her polka-dot Spring dresses on it (she has a British Fashion Council Red Carpet Award to prove it). Now she's embarking upon what looks to be another good stretch—beginning with the opening of her even larger Soho store. After her pre-fall presentation, McCartney held a dinner at her new digs.But before that, she had a crush of friends and fans at the West Village restaurant One If By Land, Two If By Sea, where models played pool and taught each other Scrabble while posing in the designer's new collection. They were upstairs, downstairs, in the garden—about as many stations, it turned out, as stories in the collection. Stella counted six. Listing them would be tedious, and antithetical to the go-forth-and-shop spirit of the thing. Suffice it to say that the dominant interplay was between city (as exemplified by sharp tailoring, like three-button blazers with an especially high button stance, oxford shirting, and tie pins) and country (equestrienne staples like riding pants done Stella's way, cut high and tight). Rough and tumble in the stables as some pieces might have been—an organic cotton fleece jacket, say, or a buffalo plaid blanket coat—they found their equal and opposite in stylized, couture-referencing details elsewhere, like the rounded cape sleeves of a creamy evening coat.
8 January 2012
Profits are up 34 percent at Stella McCartney, it was reported today. Something is definitely clicking for the designer, who seemed more in control of her confident, sexy message than ever this season. "It's a celebration of energy, freshness, and fitness," McCartney said, right after negotiating a barter deal with front-row guest Cindy Sherman. "I worship the ground you walk on," she told the artist.This collection seems destined to ignite more fashion fandom for McCartney. The chief reasons: the clingy numbers she closed the show with. Last season's L.B.D.s with sheer polka-dot insets were a huge hit (see: Kate Winslet,Mildred Piercepremiere). Today's dresses are their summery sisters—shorter and in zippy mixed prints and white mesh separated by three-dimensional swirls of corded embroidery.In counterpoint to those slinky dresses was a renewed focus on relaxed ease: paisley pajama sets, weightless knit polo shirts and shorts combos, the de rigueur jumpsuits that she put her stamp on eons ago. Some looks were accompanied by pool sandals to underscore the effect, and the lace-trimmed slipdresses the designer opened with had a sporty spin thanks to the athletic mesh details. The embroidered swirls held it all together. "In England, summer is so short," she said, sweating through Paris' Fall heat wave. Sporty or not, a good portion of the steam backstage was coming off the clothes.
2 October 2011
A Stella McCartney presentation—even for an inter-season collection—is never less than an event. For Resort, the designer threw a garden party at St. Luke's in the West Village, where models knocked around croquet balls and played Ping-Pong as vendors served "Stella's Shave Ice" and waiters toted trays of Guinness. "Have a beer!" McCartney chided one teetotaling editor.In lesser hands, the theatrics of McCartney's three-ring presentations might dwarf the clothes they're created to show, but in her case there's method to the merriment. McCartney spoke of making each piece special, from the Hawaiian-printed tunic tops to the cropped seersucker shorts. That's not empty bragging; that's a business strategy. Resort is a sales-driven collection, and the designer is the first to admit that it's the rare client who's going to be able to wear her collection head to toe. More likely she'll snag some favorite items here and there and integrate them into her own wardrobe—just as McCartney pulls together pieces from her various collections herself.The clothes here are made to be mixed. McCartney played up the point by combining prints recklessly—Hawaiian with seersucker, houndstooth with "deck chair stripe." The shapes she proposed are largely label standards, with seasonal tweaks: the tailored jacket (here, an elongated crombie, nipped slightly closer to the body than usual); the cuffed cigarette pant; a long, menswear-shirting top, here embroidered with brilliant palm trees. For added pop, there were bubble-shaped capes, color-blocked mélange knits, and a sheer blouse bedecked with bows. If that sounds like a shopping list, that's the point. "There's a lot of versatility; that's what's nice about a [Resort] collection," McCartney said. "You don't have to be so controlled. You can give a lot of different people a lot of different things and not be afraid to do that."
12 June 2011
Stella McCartney pushed her signature masculine/feminine mix to extremes for Fall. "I wanted to take it to the next level," she said backstage. "You can get stuck in one mode." McCartney has staked out a territory that's all about sexy ease. Good for her for taking a leap today, but not every look landed on solid ground.The most recognizable element of the McCartney oeuvre, the sharply tailored pantsuit, got plenty of runway time, but it took on proportions that can only be likened to David Byrne inStop Making Sensemode. Other pieces received the super-size treatment, as well: Shawl-collar winter coats came with sloping shoulders; a sporty bomber was elongated to practically the knees. Along similar lines, the gold laminated texturized knits and the Issey Miyake pleats had a sculptural quality, but whereas the former looked stiff, the latter felt softer, more womanly. And if you thought last season's citrus motif was loud, it had nothing on the gold Mylar print that was used for another big suit.Representing the feminine side of the story were polka dots, embroidered onto ivory tulle T-shirts layered over a pair of trousers or peeking out beneath the hem of a smoking jacket. Alternatively, they were inset into curvy black dresses as stretchy, transparent point d'esprit. These, like the sleeveless seamed hourglass dresses with the peplums in front, more reliably captured the sexy McCartney spirit.
6 March 2011
A few months back,Stella McCartneythrew open the doors of her English countryside manse to Bruce Weber, and by extension, all of the readers ofVogue. If she wanted to compound the real estate envy she engendered in the viewing public, she did a very good job with her pre-fall presentation, shown to a throng of gawkers in a sprawling, four-floor loft in the West Village. Models gossiped in front of screens playingA Streetcar Named Desire; a pair boogied at a bedroom platter party to vintage Bowie LPs; Arizona Muse and Hanne Gaby Odiele toasted marshmallows in a roaring fire. Tables overflowed with macarons and chocolates from England's Charbonnel et Walker.Looking beyond the charming tableaux vivants, this was in fact an eminently commercial collection, almost to a fault. But if there were no surprises along the lines of the citrus print she showed on her Spring runway, the McCartney standards were tweaked and trotted out in fine new form: boxy double-breasted coats in camel and Prince of Wales check in longer iterations, thick-gauge sweater dresses, pretty little silk shifts that showed plenty of leg. Long-sleeved wool dresses with apron tops managed to emphasize the bust while revealing not an inch—neat trick. The overall mood might be termed "young ladylike," from the polite fern prints to the chunky-heeled pumps gilded with gold-bordered soles.
9 January 2011
How do you do the new longer lengths and not look mumsy? That was the puzzle Stella McCartney set out to solve in a collection that played to her strengths. Her answer—box pleats in back, a pair of slits up the front of each leg—was simple enough, but the results were very sexy in her signature breezy way. A silk dress in a vibrant citrus print (first bananas at Prada, now lemons and grapefruit at McCartney) was also slashed at the waist and back, and it had an easy chic that could make it the one thing in your closet you turn to again and again. It just might be the dress of the summer.In contrast, a denim section of tunics and shorts in boxy shapes looked somewhat clunky. But as ever, McCartney had a lot of strong tailoring, slightly softened this season in a palette of faded pastels like rose, pistachio, and light blue. The other thing that made her suits look new was the cut of the pants. High-waisted, cropped, cuffed, and with a hint of a flare, they stood out in a month full of floor-scraping trousers.And what of the red-carpet frocks for her front-row gal pals? The designer, who's expecting baby number four, skipped them this season. As an alternative, she showed a pair of double-breasted backless vests, totally on trend and totally McCartney. Salma and Liv would no doubt approve.
3 October 2010
Resort's latest incarnation—as a new two-week-long fashion week, essentially—reached its apex at Stella McCartney's happening at Gavin Brown's Enterprise last night. First, there were the A-listers—Gwyneth Paltrow, Naomi Watts, and Kate Hudson, included. Then, there were the margaritas and the passed hors d'oeuvres, not to mention the quartet doing four-part harmony that had the models dancing along. And finally, amid the crush of editors and retailers, there was the designer herself, having flown in from London for the occasion.Resort is an optimistic, hopeful season for McCartney. "I love early spring; everything's alive again and growing," she said. "I think the clothes reflect that." Micro-shifts came splashed with lush botanical prints, and, save for some of her signature Savile Row-sharp suits, the collection was all about bare legs. Think lace shorts, A-line dresses, tulip-shaped skirts. If you were smart, you chatted up Paltrow to find out how she's come by her very toned, very well-publicized gams.
7 June 2010
Stella McCartney's show began with a fake recording of Tiger Woods' alleged call to his mistress, the one in which he asks her to remove her name from her voicemail because his wife has found her number on his phone. Things ended, as usual, with a Beatles song; this season it was "Mother Nature's Son." They made for perplexing, if thought-provoking, bookends to a collection of daywear that for the most part looked tailor-made not for celebrity groupies but for the smart, powerful businesswoman. It was clean, polished, and chic—three buzzwords of the season.An unfettered charcoal coat, a notched lapel its only decoration, opened the show, and was followed by streamlined, hip-grazing tunics. When they were worn with narrow, tapering trousers or even stirrup pants, along with pointy kitten heels, they looked like modern, easy answers to the much maligned boardroom pantsuit. Just as often, though, they came without bottoms, which meant that there was a lot of leg on McCartney's runway. Plenty sexy, but perhaps not so user-friendly as a sleeveless coat-dress in camel or her beautifully spare double-breasted white coat.For evening, the designer experimented with sheer organza overlays (a motif that also turned up at Givenchy). She draped them on top of a one-shoulder iridescent paillette dress or a nude bustier number embroidered with scarlet roses. In other words, they were quite a bit trickier than her fabulously minimal daywear.
7 March 2010
Stella McCartney's pre-fall presentation turned out to be one of the most civilized occasions of Paris Couture week: tea at the British Embassy with models wandering around chatting to guests and hanging out playing snooker (all while onlookers politely boggled at the sight of Kate Moss and Jamie Hince being introduced to the ambassador, Sir Peter Westmacott). Circulating in a double-faced camel peplum jacket and seventies-look jeans, McCartney explained the rationale behind this in-between delivery. "It's to provide a whole wardrobe, pieces that will stay with you for years because of the quality, and because, hopefully, they have a kind of timelessness." The beige cashmere cape-sleeved coats and A-line skirts (more of that seventies flavor that's started to come through this season) had a classics-revisited air about them, and there were plenty of McCartney's own go-to constants in the way of tailored pants. Her Prince of Wales gray check double-breasted trouser suit came shorn of lapels; and in lightweight pinkish-ivory silk, her brilliantly fitted, man-tailored, cropped-at-the-anklebone trouser looked dressy enough (with an embroidered bolero) to be a perfect solution for relaxed summer evenings.
26 January 2010
Trey Speegle's giant paint-by-number canvas spelling out the wordYESat the back of Stella McCartney's runway summed up the mood of today's collection quite succinctly. These were uncomplicated, upbeat, and above all colorful clothes for women who prefer not to think too hard about getting dressed but still want to look young, sexy, and chic. It's a sentiment that McCartney, a mother of three young children and the head of a growing fashion empire, understands intimately—as do her loyal customers, including front-row pal Gwyneth Paltrow.The actress, who sat sandwiched between Stella's dad, Sir Paul, and Charlotte Rampling, wore a McCartney blazer and skinny denim. Both made appearances on the runway, but these weren't the designer's signature elongated, borrowed-from-the-boys shapes. Instead, she took her tailoring in a more feminine direction. Jackets in silvery raw silk shantung came with a graceful ruffle down one lapel, or a sweet peplum, and were paired with wrapped-waist, relaxed silk pants. Denim turned up as a pinafore and as easy button-front A-line skirts, worn with a silk shirt or a lace cami and jacket. Wedge cork Linda sandals, inspired by McCartney's late mother, complemented the clothes' slightly retro seventies feel."Summer's not about aggression," the designer said backstage, and that thinking extended into evening, for which she proposed red, blue, and orange rose-print pleated dresses edged at the neckline and hem with swirls of ruffles. The collection won't necessarily situate her in Spring's big conversations about sheerness or lingerie (she did transparency and lace last season). Not that she minds. "I wanted to teach my customers not to be afraid of the simple stuff," she said. McCartney clearly isn't, and it's that kind of confidence that makes her clothes so winning.
4 October 2009
Stella McCartney's Resort collection made its debut at a soirée the designer hosted in absentia at her L.A. store on Friday night in honor of World Environment Day. Cameron Diaz sported a white party dress with black floral beading (minus the belt it was worn with in McCartney's New York showroom), a look that hewed to the saucier side of the designer's sexy/sportif approach. Also in the first camp: Savile Row-sharp tuxedos and a guipure lace jumpsuit (McCartney herself wore that number to the Met gala), along with a pair of floral dresses, one in acid-bright sequins and the other in a naive scribble print. Nautically inspired striped sweater dresses, slouchy drawstring-waist jackets, and a romper or two represented the sportier side of things. Proving that the designer practices what she preaches, 15 percent of the line is partially or 100 percent organic.
7 June 2009
Say goodbye to the all-in-one. For Fall, Stella McCartney put aside the sportier sensibility that's become her MO of late and embraced the twin passions with which she launched her label back in the late nineties: suiting and slipdresses. "I wanted to look at what makes a Stella girl," she said. The result was one of the designer's best collections in some time.Jackets in black and white or red and black micro-checks were roomy and long enough to function as a dress, which they were asked to do when paired on the runway with vegan legging boots. (These needle-heeled numbers were definitely up there with the season's other extreme footwear.) Elegant cocoon coats were made edgier with super-skinny belts, and a couple of them got the trompe l'oeil treatment—coming, they looked like a jacket and skirt. Houndstooth, meanwhile, appeared on clingy knit sweater dresses.The prettiest slipdresses we've seen from New York to Paris put into practice something else McCartney mentioned backstage: her interest in taking things apart and putting them together again. Silk was spliced with tulle to create provocative peekaboo panels raying out from the midriff and down the legs. The same trick was used on illusion sleeves so it looked like black lace was floating on the models' arms. For an evening alternative, there was also a black bugle-beaded suit.McCartney's real-world approach means she can attract gals as different as Beth Ditto, Thandie Newton, Salma Hayek, and Nan Goldin, all of whom were there in her front row. Pushing boundaries wasn't the point of this collection, but she did provide a complete wardrobe for women who connect with her brand of easy, unfussy sex appeal.
8 March 2009
Stella McCartney went wild for pre-fall, using feather, lizard, and zebra prints for short dresses and jumpsuits. A knit minidress featured a prowling leopard. Her exploration of architectural lines, as on a round-sleeved and grommeted bolero or pieced jersey separates, looked strong, if primarily destined for magazine spreads. A sporty, oversize black silk topper and other slouchy outerwear pieces, on the other hand, are sure to be hits at retail.
10 February 2009
A report out today says profits at Stella McCartney's company increased sixfold last year. Clearly, her feel-good formula is working, and all the elements were in place at her Spring show: the best soundtrack in Paris (this time including a song from papa, Sir Paul), an arty backdrop (inspired by coloring books and designed by the British artists Dinos and Jake Chapman), and clothes with her trademark mix of effortlessness and sex appeal.She started by tweaking her beloved jumpsuits. They came tailored in makeup pink, with deep lapels that plunged to the navel. McCartney's kind of slouchy, slightly oversize tailoring has caught on in a major way: The longer boyfriend jacket with the strong shoulder and the pushed-up sleeve that she showed today over little cocktail dresses or with cropped pants has become a big trend. Her trench coveralls might not be adopted as readily—we don't all have legs like Natasha Poly's.But the collection's sexy side came across in plenty of other, more real-world ways. Dévoré sweaters played a demure game of peekaboo, while silk dresses in steely gray took a provocative dip in back. For evening, she kept the silhouette short, sharp, and graphic in black and white. Simply put, she's got cool-girl style down to a science.
1 October 2008
The fluid nature of resort allows for creative presentation. For her part, Stella McCartney invited editors and fans like Kate Hudson, Lola Schnabel, and Jeff Koons out for a garden party at the West Village's rarely traversed Jefferson Market Garden. (It must pay to be earth-friendly: Mother Nature obliged with a perfect evening.) "To take what I do and do it better," said McCartney of her aim for the collection. Sure enough, the designer's signatures—terrific tailored blazers, easy T-shirt dresses, girlish organza blouses, popcorn knits—were all present and accounted for on the models lounging on gingham picnic blankets (strewn with rubber ducks and retro lollipops). Of course, she cut the pretty and wearable with typical cheek: bright bags and shoes, a brooch spelling "Mother," and a swirling sailboat print that was like a postcard picked up on the boardwalk.
2 June 2008
Is felt sexy? After taking in Stella McCartney's engaging show, it's clear that, yes, in the right hands, it can be. McCartney, who has made the intersection of seduction and sporty ease her stomping ground, didn't reinvent herself this season, but she did turn out what we've come to think of as Stella-isms—the sweater dress, the swing coat, the inventive alternatives to fur—in new cozy-chic incarnations.She looked to her British heritage for her Fall motifs. Heraldic flags decorated long, off-the-shoulder knit dresses and oversize scarves; traditional broderie anglaise graced softly unstructured poet blouses and dressing gowns. If, at a time when tailoring has moved to the fore, McCartney's collection was a little light on the sharp Savile Row suiting that launched her career, well, tailoring's just not where her head is at.The designer dedicated her show to her family and "to everyone who believes you do not need fur in fashion." While you won't find a lot of those in her front row, they're out there, and McCartney offered some viable stand-ins for this season's omnipresent fur chubby: a pair of oversize washed-mohair sweaters, worn with short chiffon skirts. As for that aforementioned felt, the mottled gray coats, with their big volumes cinched by faux-leather belts, scored points for making something so stiff look so cool.
27 February 2008
Stella McCartney, whose aesthetic encompasses obsessions with things tailored and super-feminine, put away Spring's watercolor florals and pastel palette to focus on more subdued, menswear-inflected inspirations. Dashes of purple and green enlivened banker's gray, as did prints and metallics—but the overall mood was tough rather than romantic. Not that there weren't lighter moments; these took the form of tiered and textured slip-style dresses, and a lustrous Grecian drape just right for gala evenings in London.
26 January 2008
She's become known for a playful, happy kind of cool, and Stella McCartney's latest collection furthered her easygoing cause with a deft assimilation of the season's trends. She started out with a long, flowing seventies dress in a wildflower-scattered silk voile, loosely tied at the neck, then used the same colorful fabric for the jumpsuits her label is so identified with. Doing her bit for the current pajama-dressing moment, she showed boxy blue silk pj tops with tap pants peeking out from beneath, or extended the top's hem a few inches down the thigh for a reinterpretation of her favorite shirtdresses.Many of the white cotton frocks, with their dippy backs and suggestive ruffles, could've been nightgowns in a former life—but McCartney balanced all the dishabille with the blazers that she cut her teeth on in Savile Row, this time in a safari khaki or in double-breasted snow-white, worn with fluid, full-to-the-cuffed-ankle trousers.The designer has a well-known dedication to vegetarianism and the environment, and the show's backdrop, a lushly beautiful "vertical vegetal wall" by the botanist Patrick Blanc, will be donated to a low-income housing project in Boulogne, part of an effort to help teach ecology at street level. The carved wooden clogs she asked her models to wear won't make it on the street, however: One pair didn't even make it up and down the runway before falling apart. But that's not of much consequence when the clothes are as pretty and wearable as they were today.
3 October 2007
"Give me Liberty!" could have been the motto for Stella McCartney's resort collection. Where others were reviving Ossie Clark prints, she reworked the English department store's classic florals into frocks both long and flirty. Also in the lineup were pretty day dresses in plaid or muted pastels that floated around the body, and, for evening, cocktail dresses in lamé or multicolored sequins that popped like bubbles in Champagne. What to wear with one of McCartney's chic oversize toppers? Try the high-waisted boyfriend jeans she made in collaboration with the French denim label Notify.
26 June 2007
The opening look at Stella McCartney—a frankly fake fur ingeniously fashioned from dense whorls of hand-tufted yarn—set the tone: Welcome to one of the least pretentious and most playful shows of Paris fashion week. The fun continued with knits, including a hard-to-miss oversize red-and-black cardigan woven into a polar-bear pattern. And last season¿s rompers grew legs, becoming fine-gauge jumpsuits in hot pink or sweatshirt gray.It wasn't all games. Outerwear was sportif too, but also seriously chic. McCartney focused on loose, flaring, of-the-moment silhouettes like trapeze coats and capes. Hooded anoraks were adorably egg-shaped.Fans of her sophisticated Savile Row suits, though, will have to content themselves with a satin-lapel smoking and a cropped, double-breasted jacket with brass buttons. The look at Stella is extremely young and very long on leg, which meant few pants and short, short, short hems on baby-doll smocks, petticoat dresses, and curvy bustier styles. For extra cheek, she paired them with ankle boots and socks. Count on McCartney to bring the charm.
28 February 2007
With her second child on the way, it would seem that Stella McCartney has ease on her mind. And if her new collection's all-in-ones were a bit tooRomper Room, she showed plenty that was viable and in keeping with the season's themes: puff-sleeved sack dresses, tent coats with round collars that perched airily about the shoulders, and double-layer silk frocks in gorgeous kelly greens. She also had her signature slouchy shirtdresses, although these last were awkwardly sewn together between the knees.The vibe for evening was just as breezy, even a bit Californian—a nod, perhaps, to her Hollywood fans. Short, racer-back tank dresses came covered in studs, while a silk organza trapeze was pin-tucked from waist to hem in gently rolling waves.But nothing got the pulse racing quite like the show's great-looking, newly proportioned suits. Longer through the jacket but still slim, and with high-waisted, straight-leg pants, they were a sophisticated, yet sexy antidote to the show's otherwise billowing bubble shapes. McCartney earned her recent renown as a women's designer by making clothes to suit not just playtime but all of the complex obligations of modern girls like herself. That's why you'll likely find a lot more of those Savile Row–inflected stunners in the showroom.
4 October 2006
Stella McCartney has had a lot on her plate this past year. New baby, a smash-hit gig for H&M, and a line of attention-grabbing activewear for Adidas. Well done for all that—but has she had enough in reserve to concentrate on her own brand? Her collection didn't really look like it. What she showed—big cocoon cardigans with sloppy collars, skimpy printed jersey dresses, mixed with A-line smocks and swing coats—lacked the stylistic grip and polish expected from a player in the premier league of Parisian fashion. Granted, something in their sixties/eighties spirit glanced in the right direction, but the focus seemed fuzzy.The presentation took place in the pompous surroundings of the gilded salon of the Grand Hotel, a habitat perennially associated with the rarefied métier of haute couture showings. Maybe that was a policy choice intended to separate her top line from other things she's doing, but you can't help thinking there are bolder strategies, beyond selection of venue, that could be used to leverage the equity behind brand McCartney. In a season when menswear tailoring is so much on the agenda, she could, for instance, have upped the luxe content by celebrating her signature Savile Row pantsuits, whose cut can't be achieved at mass level. Then again, perhaps a better way to go about it would be to turn her collection into a microcosm of the high-low fashion reality that McCartney embodies. What would excite both critics and her fan base alike would be to see her jeans, sporty pieces, and accessible young-girl ideas cut together with edited standouts from her posher top line. The makings are all there in her personality. Perhaps she just needs the time and space to figure it out.
1 March 2006
It's easy to see Stella McCartney's progress through the seasons in terms of a young woman's life stages. First, there was the student, picking her way through market stalls in search of vintage lingerie and old men's tailoring. Then came the club years, up dancing all night. Next, whoa: love, marriage, a baby carriage—and before you know it, back to work, a changed person.Her collection notes, channeling words like "easy," "relaxed," and "inner confidence," certainly seemed to reflect a new state of grown-up serenity. Judging by the clothes she showed here, it involves thinking about the need for a sporty pantsuit—a go-to-work brass-buttoned blazer and a smart pair of pants. Oh, and let's see, a breezy oversize shirtdress to pull on double-quick with a pair of heels, and out the door. Plus, something simple, like a sharp-chic bustier dress, to jump into while feeding the baby—and on to dinner.As all the above made clear, McCartney's come a long way in thinking through what her clothes are meant to do for her peer group. Her choice of color and print caught the general season's drift of whites, pale blues and grays, and art-based patterns (in her case, inspired by Jeff Koons), but she wasn't stressing over being über trendy. What she's doing now doesn't make the headline-grabbing class of directional fashion, but maybe that's a conscious decision. Like all young moms, she's reached the point where the woman separates from the girl.
5 October 2005
Now that young women are in top spots at design houses, a baby boomlet has hit Paris. Both Stella McCartney and Chloé's Phoebe Philo are happily at home in London with their infants, Miller Willis and Maya Wigram, respectively, which leaves their teams to get on with their shows.In McCartney's case, though, it seems she had the job done well before her visit last week to the delivery suite. Her fall collection was held together loosely with an eighties-sixties-Balenciaga theme, into which she rounded up her personal thoughts on volume, tweed, and the season's ubiquitous bubble skirt.A big balloon-sleeve coat and a yoked wrap jacket opened the show, channeling both eighties Japan and Cristobal Balenciaga's monastic constructions. But McCartney's over-the-knee black leather boots grounded them in today. And the rest of the collection, too, read more as a young woman's take on current ideas than an earnest essay. Many of the pieces, like the oversize sweaters worn over leggings, were about translating the season into easy pieces.One standout was a houndstooth tweed drop-waist coat, with a slight pouf at the hem. The look's early-sixties couture vibe extended into the evening pieces, with dresses that melded corseted bustier tops with turned-under hemlines, the best of which was done in a lovely shade of red. But the outfit that caused most comment among the exiting crowd was the one worn by Elise Crombez midway through the show. It was a boxy, elongated sweater pulled over a loose silk dress, executed in the dirty-pink shades Stella McCartney has established as her signature. It demonstrated a perfectly pitched, no-nonsense approach to dressing she would do well to build on in seasons to come.
2 March 2005
Every now and again, a fashion mood emerges that should work particularly well for certain designers. Sometimes, they hit their stride and get it right during that period; sometimes, they don't. Stella McCartney's spring collection put her firmly into the former. She took what has been slowly emerging in Milan and Paris—pastoral, romantic dressing, and a sharper, speedier sportswear aesthetic—and spliced them together. It's not that she hasn't tried to do this before, but this season it just all came together. Better still, she hit on some of the other key trends—safari jackets; slouchy, straight-cut cuffed pants; and breezy, billowing dresses—and effortlessly made them her own.McCartney is most convincing when it looks like the clothes belong in her world, not to mention her closet. Previous seasons have featured pieces that were a little too tricky for their own good: If you can't imagine her wearing it, then it's not going to fly. But this time round, McCartney played to her strengths: A smidge of vintage (floaty floral chiffon dresses), a touch of lingerie (camisoles and bras used to good effect layered underneath tops or dresses), pretty tailoring (shrunken jackets over those loose pants). And she made the strongest case for tiered gypsy skirts, letting them swoosh along the runway in white cotton muslin, as delicate as Edwardian underwear.
6 October 2004
With Tom Ford (and CEO Domenico De Sole) now out the door at Gucci Group, these must be unsettled times for the other designers whose houses are owned by the company. This might account for the lack of focus that came across in Stella McCartney's collection. Generally pretty tuned in to what her girl wants to wear—and, just as importantly, how she wants to look in it—McCartney was a bit wobbly here. Some of her excursions into volume looked a little troublesome: Anyone for a huge satin and nylon quilted coat that looks like you just swiped the duvet off the bed and went out the door? Thought not.But there were moments that worked. McCartney was on much-surer ground when she took her silhouette closer to the body and let the swing of the godets on a slipper-satin skirt or a jersey dress introduce a touch of fluidity and fullness without ever overwhelming the body. She also had some success when her street-savvy tailoring didn¿t stray into the realms of the supersized, such as with a close-fit houndstooth jacket in pale caramel and pink tones, worn with khaki pants tucked into faux-leather seventies-style boots.There was the return of the chunky Peruvian sweaters that McCartney must have remembered from her childhood (worn, no doubt, by mom Linda), now looking like a neat update on Fair Isle knits. And there were some good accessories, always a challenge for someone dedicated to never using fur or leather. The standout: a canvas sneaker resting on a high rubber heel.
6 March 2004
Confidence, confidence, confidence! What a treat it was to see Stella McCartney in self-assured mode, her finger firmly on fashion's current pulse.Gone were the tricky corsetry, the bland biscuit shades, the reworked vintage pieces of previous collections. Instead, McCartney sent out strong color—aqua, spearmint, jade, lemon, pink—and banished references to iconic designers’ past hits, relying on her own keen sense of what makes clothes graceful and cool. For the former, there were the dresses suspended by superfine straps, and filmy skirts of petal-like chiffon layers, all artfully blown by wind machines as the models struck their poses. Hip was defined by a crème de menthe silk blouson, or the sharp, sexy pants that came with milky-colored chiffon tops hung from latex straps. McCartney licked the ballet trend currently pirouetting its way through Paris, with second-skin jerseys and knitted rib warmers over floaty minis. The accessories looked great too: flesh-toned, transparent-strapped shoes and metal-trimmed bags embellished with enamel stones. Those, and the delicate eveningwear—embroidered and smocked with gold thread—will have her fans in raptures next spring.Back to the confidence issue. Could it be her recent marriage to Alasdhair Willis that has finally anchored McCartney’s self-reliance? Whatever the reason, the Stella McCartney woman is no longer trying too hard. She's all grown up, and looks much better for it.
11 October 2003
Stella McCartney sent along rose-colored glasses with the invitations to her show this season, but they really weren't necessary. The charm of her show was visible to the naked eye. Strict tweed pencil skirts worn with blousy cropped satin jackets in pinks and mauves were a modern version of sexy secretary glamour. Ribbed wool trims and tight techno-fiber pants that looked like something you'd see on a snowboarder's half-pipe lent an air of sporty sophistication.Models walked to a hip-hoppy remix of "My Favorite Things," in which the mundane yearnings for "brown paper packages tied up with string" had been replaced with more glamorous listings: "diamonds and rubies and Stella's dresses." That must have referred to the pretty silk cocktail frocks that closed the show. Done in flower-petal colors with rows of pinkie-size crystals, they're surefire candidates to become the favorite things of party girls from London to L.A.Yet for all the icy elegance, there was the feeling that something was missing from this collection. Perhaps it was the youthful, cheeky edge that's made the designer a fashion favorite with the kind of woman who will throw an old hoodie sweatshirt over a fresh-off-the-runway dress. This season, with too much tricky Alaïa-inspired tailoring, McCartney seems to be trying too hard. And that, among the seen-it-all crowd that travels in those casually chic circles, is definitely a no-no.
9 March 2003
Stella McCartney has a brand to build—and a beautiful new store to go with it. For summer, she'll be filling her shop with the kind of clothes for which she’s already known: flighty little dresses and chiffon blouses, mixed with great suits. Her departure this season was to leave aside the street-toughness of some of her former collections, replacing it with delicate washed-out color and embellished details. There was a lot more polish and softness about this show—a confident step forward for a young designer who's taking her place on the international platform.Vintage-inspired lingerie, one of McCartney's recurring themes, was threaded through the collection. The opening bodysuit was pieced in rose satin and chiffon and worn with sage-green puffy shorts; a later jumpsuit had lace inserts running down the sides. Addicts of the designer's mannish tailoring, meanwhile, will have found her quintessential jacket done in gray-blue Prince of Wales check, matched with pants that had a lattice of open work along the outside seam.Don't imagine Stella's quite settled down to the quiet life yet, though. For evening, she festooned gold chains onto the bodices of cutout dresses and tops, and amped up the jacket with traceries of glitter. Her hippest new idea came in the form of puffy satin bombers—she transformed one, a bright-yellow fusion of sport and chinoiserie print, into an off-the-shoulder bubble dress. McCartney is so into the glam-bomber idea, in fact, that she bounded onto the runway wearing a black version herself.
6 October 2002
Stella McCartney has built a reputation on her ability to gauge what women of her generation want to wear. In her second collection under her own name, McCartney, now 30, did an about-face from her jokey, nightclubby presentation for Spring, and set off in a newly sophisticated direction.The designer sent out gentler layerings of the turn-on pieces she's become known for starting, with satiny, slightly padded parkas featuring raw edges and a tracery of the naïve hand-stitched embroidery she's used before. The cool factor was there, but McCartney also unified the whole collection with a subtle color statement—soft, elusive tints of oyster, ivory, plaster pink, washed-out grays and mossy faded greens. Her super-narrow gray-ish jeans zipped at the ankle and combined with high-heeled, two-tone pumps with round toes provided the base on which she layered georgette dresses and some great tops. Chunky cable knits and a fashion-freak version of the classic U.S. Air Force aviator jacket looked strong, but not too street. McCartney's takes on tuxedos, high-waisted double-face cashmere coats and long chiffon gowns rounded out a collection in which she drew a line in the sand about who she is, who she's addressing, and where she's going next. The girl has grown up.
10 March 2002
Stella McCartney’s debut collection after leaving Chloé fell far short of expectations.McCartney’s flashy, boisterous parade featured risqué slogans, sometimes in Cockney rhyming slang, printed on practically all of her looks. An almost pornographic dress read “Slippery When Wet;” cropped T-shirts had “Raspberry Ripple” scribbled across the chest; a long coat encouraged observers to “Spank the Monkey.” Apart from these artless wannabe shockers, McCartney offered uninspired electric blue sequined pieces, mini-slips with trailing sleeves, and dresses with dotted-face designs courtesy of artist Gary Hume.Although some of McCartney’s T-shirts and accessories (like the hard “Wet” case) could be commercially viable, her show clearly did not live up to the technical and creative standards expected of a major Gucci Group label.
7 October 2001