Stella McCartney on Pioneering Sustainability in Fashion

Willow Defebaugh

To start from the beginning, can you share about what your family instilled in you growing up about sustainability and the planet?

Stella McCartney

I mean, the word sustainability didn’t exist at the time. I grew up on an organic farm in East Sussex. My parents were the first people to be part of a pilot scheme for organic farming in England. So I grew up very already out of the box, thinking like, “What is organic?” It was the early days of even that word. And I’m famously vegetarian. My mom started a vegetarian food brand in 1991. So she was a huge pioneer, and my father was very much aligned with that. The two of them were a bit of a powerhouse [team]. 

And so I was brought up with a different way of looking at the world—especially at that time when this conversation was not permitted at all and was very much met with anger and defensiveness. I was brought up observing my parents fight for the right of animals to share planet Earth with us in equality. I watched them try to figure out how to make it palatable for people. They started with PETA: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. It became something that then linked to the environment at a later stage when there was scientific data that supported [the idea of] animal agriculture being quite harmful to the planet. 

Willow

As such a longtime animal rights advocate, how has a sense of kinship with the nonhuman world shaped your approach to design and your trajectory as a creative?

Stella

I think there’s just a level of empathy that comes through, being a female-founded brand, designing for predominantly women, and being a mother. And from an early age, I was never taught to disrespect animals. Even still, I have a lot of conversations with people, and they’re like, “But humans are superior. We are intelligent.” And I do not hold that view. I really, truly feel that animals communicate in their own way with each other, just like we communicate in our own way with each other. A cow looking at us doesn’t understand what we’re saying, but a cow still gives birth, loves her baby. And they have footage and they have scientific data that there’s [distress] attached to their babies being taken away from them. I just feel like we are [all] animals inhabiting the planet.

When it comes to design, in answer to your question, it means I come at every season with a conversation as to: Why am I making this? How am I going to use this to change my industry? How am I going to have a conversation that people can learn from and be informed to make a more conscious contribution with their time on Earth? So that is my way of translating my point of view and still wrapping it up in a beautiful, sexy, fashionable way, so you don’t compromise any of the creativity and the desirability in the [pursuit of] sustainability. 

Willow

Speaking of, over a billion animals are killed each year for leather products, whereas at Stella, that number is zero. And this year, I believe, is the 15-year anniversary of the Falabella bag. Can you speak a little bit to what it was like being one of the first to really have these conversations in the industry? Did it ever feel isolating? 

Stella

I’ve never worked with leather. Even when I was at [Central] St. Martin’s, my whole show, even my shoes and the accessories, were plant-based. Sometimes I work with my bag and shoe people, and we’ll be designing—and now we can get [leather alternatives] looking super realistic and soft—and I’ll be like, “I don’t even really know what real leather feels like, you’ll have to help me out here. Is this good?” In our last show, we had a mock croc coat made out of the waste of the apple industry.

It’s been from day one, and it’s been difficult, if I can be honest. I don’t think I ever give myself and the business credit for how hard it is to work this way, because I’m always trying to act like everything’s easy and that we can do anything. And especially in 1997, it was near impossible just to get the materials. They didn’t exist. The very few alternatives to leather that did exist were normally for upholstery inside cars, not for an ethical reason, more so you could wash it. 

Stella

We’re in this weird space in our industry where we’re bordering on farming, bordering on science, bordering on material development. [Because] once you start exploring that conversation, then you realize that most faux leathers have plastic in them or are petroleum based. We don’t use any PVC here at Stella. We don’t use it in sequins. We’re working with incredible young scientists and innovators looking at algae sequins and algae knits that are completely biodegradable. We’ve worked with this incredible innovation that’s scalable—and I think that’s one of the most important words here—called Mirum, which is completely plastic-free. 

Creatively, it’s limiting, because we have five [kinds of] sequins available to us that don’t have petroleum in them, whereas my competitors have 5,000. We have to do a lot with very little. But I quite like a constraint. 

Willow

What are some of the challenges you face in material innovation specifically and also the possibilities?

Stella

We found this young female scientist [with whom] we grew sequins. I would say to her, “Okay, I need like 50,000 more sequins.” And she’d be like, “I can grow you six in the next six months.” So those limitations are real, and that is sort of where you get a block at the moment. But then you have something like Mirum, which is completely plastic-free, rubber-based faux leather—and it’s scalable. It is at the right price point. And that’s super exciting when that happens. 

Willow

It’s estimated that between 80 and 150 billion articles of clothing are produced each year, and your recent campaign was shot at a recycling factory to raise awareness around this crisis. So much of this is driven by fast fashion. What is the role that luxury fashion can play in creating change and how we approach clothing? 

Stella

Every second, a truckload of fast fashion is buried or burnt. Every second. How many seconds have we been talking? And those pieces, sometimes they’re not even worn. They literally go into the landfill with their labels still on. But at the same time, I understand luxury fashion is available to…what percentage of the world? And I struggle with that. I struggle because I want everyone to have access to what we do at Stella. But if you do things right and if you do things well, it comes at a cost. Faux leather is more expensive than real leather. I mean, that is a head fuck. I’m sorry, that is morally so wrong. I can’t get my head around it. 

In the luxury space, I’m a really weird rogue pirate ship on the edge of the conversation. And I feel it’s my responsibility to inform people, but I’m the only one working in this way still. It is a luxury to buy something that is not killing the planet. It is a luxury to respect animals, to feel the love and the goodness in a product. Some people say to me, “I feel the love when I wear your clothes.” And that’s a luxury to me. Our industry holds a responsibility, and it needs to rise to the occasion. At the same time, luxury should be more timeless in its design. It should by all rights last your entire lifetime. It’s an investment. I believe that now more than ever, the resale of an item, the afterlife, the next life, the rentability—luxury is where that happens. It doesn’t happen in the fast-fashion space.

Willow

This recent collection and the recycled materials that you’ve used in it make me think about the fact that when we talk about kinship and relationship, we’re often thinking about a relationship to other living beings, but there’s also a sense of kinship to what is discarded or what is passed. How are you conceptualizing waste these days? 

Stella

PETA did a really great program where they asked everyone that had fur coats to send them in, and they were doing a burial ritual with these lives that have been basically sacrificed for a coat. When you think of that actually being a murder of something…it’s one thing to waste cotton, which is also not great, but it’s another thing with a spiritual being. There’s a level of respect there. So I just don’t want any waste. When COVID hit, I was like, “Okay, great, we can’t get material. This is so cool. I didn’t want to use any new materials this season anyway. What do we have in stock? What’s sitting there? Let’s make a zero-waste dress using 16 seasons worth of print.” For me, waste is a really great dilemma to try and solve. We work with innovators like Protein Evolution—we’ve done a whole pilot with them where they’re breaking down our waste, and then we’ve remade a garment, but then that garment can be broken down again.

Willow

Beauty is often not the focal point of environmental conversations. And at the same time, I think so many of us can agree that it’s the beauty of Mother Earth that we’re all seeking to protect and that drives so many of us. How can we harness our species’ obsession with beauty within the environmental movement? 

Stella

It’s a good question. I’ve seen this conversation really in its entirety. I was there at the beginning, watching my parents being completely ridiculed, and now in and of myself in my own career, and at a dinner party having a vegetarian meal and people going, “What’s that?” People [were] attacking me because I wasn’t eating meat. And now I’m in this weird place—which is great—where all people want to talk to me about is that. I don’t even get the privilege of being able to talk about me as a fashion designer and how fucking kick ass that last show was, just on a fashion level, because I’m the go-to sustainable [designer].

I find it hard to gauge, because there’s still part of me that knows you have to make it digestible for people and you have to wrap it up a little bit in a way that’s like, “Oh, don’t notice that I’m writing a letter from Mother Earth and telling you lot to fucking wake up.” I’m always trying to play that balance. But maybe I’m not judging it right, because today you can show a monkey being tested for skincare like loud and proud, and you won’t get hate. I’m always towing the line for what’s going to alienate people and what’s going to bring them in. I love a bit of that, I’m punk rock. But you’ve got to strike a balance. 

Willow

To bring this full circle, how does being a mother inform your eco-activism?

Stella

It’s the most important job I have, and it’s very fragile and it’s very unknown and I’m learning on the job, but it is my biggest responsibility. I’ve got to do right by these kids. I know what I’m doing is not about my time here and it’s not about getting awards for it. Everything I do is for when I’m not here anymore. Having kids makes that even more part of the conversation.