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.”
