Michael Jackson’s daughter between two Beatles on the front row, and a Spice Girl backstage with Charlotte Rampling. David Byrne on the mood board and an apple-leather mock-croc vegan trenchcoat with a sparkling mesh swimsuit made from recycled aluminium sequins on the runway. Kate Moss’s daughter catwalking in a turquoise minidress of responsibly sourced alpaca to a soundtrack of an environmental manifesto voiced by Olivia Colman and Helen Mirren. It can only be the Stella McCartney show.
“Well, I mean, we’re in a bit of a state here, aren’t we?” said McCartney of the slogan vest that read “About Fucking Time”. “I always want the platform of Stella McCartney to have an environmental message. I am here to remind people that this is one of the most harmful industries. But I’m not here to make people depressed and scared. I want to celebrate Mother Earth and all of her creatures and to remind us all to be conscious of that, but at the same time, I want it to be an uplifting experience.”
McCartney is determined that the planet-wrecking version of fashion should not get a monopoly on glamour. Sustainability, she says, should be invisible on the runway. The show began with a rose-pink trouser suit, unbuttoned with nothing underneath, redolent of Rampling-esque sauciness, worn under a powder-puff faux-fur coat that Alexis Colby would have coveted.
There were lashings of glossy “leather”, made from a bio-based alternative that uses agricultural waste and recycled material. A cobweb of lead-free crystals over bare skin channelled this Paris fashion week’s lascivious appetite for naked dressing. A lip motif on a scant silk dress represented womanhood, sensuality and the voice of Mother Earth, but “the clothes should never be compromised”, she said backstage.
Rei Kawakubo, the revered 81-year-old designer of Comme des Garçons, said at her show a few days ago that she felt “anger against everything in the world, especially against myself”, but McCartney refuses to go down that road.
“We all get angry, but anger is not a positive form of energy for me, and I don’t think anger helps. We are solution-driven, here. We are not cutting down rainforests to make way for animal agriculture, we’re not using plastics in our sequins.”
Her brand is backed by the luxury giant LVMH, who she describes as “open-hearted” to her sustainability message. “I’m a big believer in infiltrating from within. I think it gives a really loud message to the industry that Mr Arnault is invested in this business.”
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Tailoring has been a McCartney mainstay since day one. “I’m always trying to bring back the perfect Savile Row suit. The suit is a powerful, oversized situation this season. A little bit David Byrne. For me the perfect suit starts with a borrowed man’s suit, but as a woman designing for women I know the exact spot on the hips where I want the pant to sit. I know how the perfect trousers feel when your hands are in your pockets.”
After the show, Paris Jackson chatted to Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr while Mel C gave the designer a hug. Linda McCartney was in the air, too, in drape-sleeve dresses, “because everything I do is inspired by mum’s wardrobe”. The crosshatched pattern of a tweed jacket was taken from a garden path from her childhood home in the countryside, and the family ties extended to Lila Moss on the catwalk. “I saw Lila the day she was born, so it makes me feel very happy and very maternal to see her on the runway,” said McCartney.