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 the All Is Love slogan 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.
