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 to Yellow 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.
