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!”
