A Stella career
From high street to high fashion, Stella McCartney’s got it all
While detractors put Stella McCartney’s success down to her famous parents and celebrity connections, the popularity of her collections on the high street, the catwalk and the red carpet says otherwise
Words: Liz Scarff
STELLA MCCARTNEY HAS cultivated the image of a modern style icon who you could imagine sitting on a sofa wearing her tracksuit pants and an old – but cool – T-shirt, watching Pop Idol. She likes to come across as “ordinary”, one of us. There is, of course, the billionaire Beatle father, Sir Paul, and the A-list lifestyle, so it would have been easy for Stella to become another spoilt millionaire’s brat.
“I guess I am quite honest with myself and I try to put that into all my products,” says McCartney, munching her way through a plate of sandwiches, while sinking casually into a squidgy black leather sofa in a pair of towering shoes – her own design – which she swears are totally comfortable.
The designer’s ability to move fluidly from couture to the high street is a recurrent theme in both her work and her personal life. When her 45-piece collection for Swedish high street fashion giant H&M was released to the public at 9am on 10 November 2005, it sold out within minutes. The collection, which the fashionista calls her “greatest hits”, included her classic designs such as the chunky cardigan from 2001, 1980s-style narrow zipped jeans and tailoring influenced by her Savile Row training. The pieces can now only be snapped up for inflated prices on eBay.
“I used to buy high street all the time,” explains McCartney, her accent a mixture of estuary English and transatlantic twang. “I remember the first time I saw my stuff copied, I thought it was mad, I couldn’t believe it. I thought: ‘No it must be a coincidence.’” She talks purposefully; her answers peppered with slang such as “like” and “so not”. At one point she declares: “I am so not confident in everything I do.”
“I can’t forget when I used to buy all the knock-offs; there is nothing wrong with it. Really, life is too short. When we did the H&M thing it was an acknowledgment of that – it was sort of saying I don’t know anyone now who, if you can afford a Stella McCartney couture jacket, doesn’t have a pair of shoes that cost $20. That is how people dress now and you are allowed to do that.
“I think it is good that there is so much choice out there and that people are really making their own decisions. When I design, it is all about taking this top and putting it with any trousers you want. Or you can wear this skirt with any old top – it could be from the charity shop or your grandmother’s, it doesn’t matter. That is the way I design because that is the way I dress. It is not about ‘you can only wear this jacket and those shoes and that bag’. I don’t know anyone who dresses like that anymore.”
This mix-it-up fashion philosophy is inspired by her late mother, Linda, the singer with the band Wings and vegetarian activist, who died from breast cancer in April 1998. “She wore the coolest clothes. She was so ahead of her time,” her daughter has said in the past. “I loved her clothes. She used to wear these beautiful 1930s tea dresses, with a pop T-shirt, a pair of boots and maybe a piece of couture, or just a pair of jeans. That is exactly what I do, and lots of girls do now. Mix it all up. It’s become my philosophy, too.”
That combination of fabulous clothes on a high-street girl was something that McCartney chose to be known for right from the start when she graduated from Central St Martins in 1995. Famously, her graduation show was modelled by her supermodel friends. This, combined with her parents sitting in the front row, saw her appearing in the national newspapers (clearly something that made her stand out from her fellow students).
She must have realised that choosing Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Yasmin Le Bon to walk down the student catwalk would court controversy, but showed a devil-may-care attitude. The collection itself was subsequently snapped up by stores such as Browns and Joseph, as well as in America.
POSSESSING THE MCCARTNEY surname could be seen as a “VIP fast-forward”. Not an interview, collection or perfume launch goes by without reference to it. Does she deserve her success? Was it all handed to her on a plate? Is she actually any good at designing clothes? I first met the young McCartney at a press conference. A journalist asked a question about her father and she moved the microphone from her mouth so that her curt answer was inaudible. But she was clearly not happy when she left the launch.
She memorably complained in January 1999: “I’m so sick of this ‘my parents’ thing. It’s not my fault. It’s been this way my whole life. When I would make a good drawing at school, it was because Dad was a Beatle. Or if I got a part in the school play, it was because Dad was a Beatle. What do I do? Do I become a smackhead and live off my parents’ fortune or do I have my own life?”
McCartney chose to ignore the accusations of building on her well-connected parents and decided to pursue her career, as did her other siblings: Heather, a ceramicist, Mary, a well-known photographer, who was chosen to do the official Christmas portrait of Tony Blair some years ago, and brother James, a musician.
In 1997 she got her big break, when she was appointed Director of the House of Chloé, bringing with her design assistant and friend from Central St Martins, Phoebe Philo (who later went on to succeed Stella’s position as creative director). Fashion giant Karl Lagerfeld was succinct in his opinion about his replacement: “I think they should have taken a big name,” he declared. “They did, but in music, not fashion.” Despite a poorly received first collection by McCartney, who was 25 at the time, the label went on to increase sales five-fold.
IN 2001, SHE launched her own fashion house, under her own name, with backing from Gucci. A women’s sportswear collection for Adidas, designing Madonna’s wedding dress and costumes for her Re-Invention Tour have followed. There were plenty of other celebrity commissions too, including the outfits for singer Annie Lennox’s 2004 tour and the wardrobe for Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law for the film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. McCartney also dressed her friend Gwyneth for the 2005 Oscars.
Something of a tomboy as a child, today it seems that the fashion-leader brings an element of this masculinity to her work. “If I do a design and it’s in chiffon with a lovely print, I’ll put a heavy hem on it; it’s like I can’t help myself. Or if I do a pretty little delicate blouse, I have to put a bespoke men’s tailored jacket on top. It’s just the contrast there is with me. It’s in everything with my life, my home and my furniture and very much, I guess, in my personality.”
She goes on to explain: “I don’t think that a lot of women today are feminine, feminine, feminine. Most women have two sides to them; they are forced to. Because we’re working, and we are not only mothers and girlfriends and wives, we identify with all of that; I think men do too. It is a false myth that women are this and men are that. There is a balance in everyone.”
McCartney finds her own balance by dividing her time between the Worcestershire estate and the London house she shares with husband Alasdhair Willis, 36, their two-year-old son Miller and baby daughter Bailey, whose middle name is Linda.
Willis, former publisher of interior style bible Wallpaper and now director of Established & Sons, a contemporary furniture design company, married McCartney in 2003 on the Isle of Bute. At the time the happy bride was quoted as saying: “I’ve never felt like this in a relationship before… it’s just a dream.”
Willis played an inspirational role in McCartney’s most recent creation, her perfume, Stella in Two, a mixture of amber and peony rose. “My husband wore amber the first time I met him. I love amber on men,” she states. It is her second fragrance; her first was the eponymous Stella.
Next year marks 10 years since the death of her beloved mother but she has staunchly kept Linda’s principles alive, never using leather or fur in her designs. She is also patron of the Vegetarian Society and member of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).
“Everything I do is inspired by my Mum and Dad and the way I grew up, but more directly where I grew up, in the country, aware of crystals, nature and flowers,” she says referring to her childhood in Sussex.
“To me I had a normal childhood. I had normal parents. I had a mum who was at home, who picked us up from school in her old Mini and cooked us our tea. We watched telly and went to bed. Normal.” What’s perhaps a little less normal is coming home from school to find music legend Stevie Wonder in your lounge sipping tea.
But normality is clearly important to McCartney, who freely admits to being a slob, but adds: “I just don’t let anybody see me. I rarely ever wear make-up and I don’t go to work to get papped, I go to work to work.” But don’t let the earth mother image fool you – this McCartney has got wings.
Photography: Chris Buck/Corbis Outline, Getty Images, Corbis, eyevine, Rex Features, Richard Mellow
