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 word commercial on 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.”
