The designer’s ethical stance made Stella McCartney a style outsider

Stella McCartney is a designer, a businesswoman, and an environmental activist, while talking to Sangram she says, trending on fashion will always come first. “It has to, you see. If the product is rubbish, then there is no conversation to be had. If I don’t have a successful business, then I’m an environmentalist who happens to be Paul McCartney’s daughter. No one is going to come back for more of that chat.”

“I come to fashion with the lightness of heart. I shot my last ad campaign in a landfill site for a reason, and to make a point, obviously. But the models looked happy, there was lightness, there was the color. My message is not the kind that is going to make you panic or feel rubbish about yourself or not sleep at night, because I don’t think that achieves much. Everything comes from nature. I mean, where does color come from, if not from nature, from the changing of the seasons? Every fabric we use is emulating something from nature. Nature is … oh man, it’s magnificent, isn’t it?”

The Stella McCartney pieces chosen for the exhibition reflect the contrasting emotions swirling around clothes and natural beauty. In another display case, the Mylo Falabella Prototype 1 is a handbag created in collaboration with the biotechnology company Bolt Threads, using a groundbreaking alternative to leather made from mycelium, which is the root structure of a mushroom.

Fashioned from Nature is the latest in a procession of fashion-related museum shows, with an Azzedine Alaïa retrospective at the Design Museum and the V&A’s take on Frida Kahlo’s wardrobe and image hot on its heels. Central to it, says the curator, Edwina Ehrman, is the need “to get away from the idea that sustainable fashion should look quirky. We need leaders like Stella McCartney, who can tell scientists what the future needs to look like.”

There is just one high-street garment in Fashioned from Nature, a dress made from recycled ocean plastic from H&M’s Conscious range. McCartney’s elegant ethics are beyond the budget of most people. She says she wishes more people “would save up and buy one thing at Stella McCartney instead of the 20 things they buy from a fast-fashion label”, but I am not convinced that most family budgets work like this. McCartney’s label takes another step upmarket this year with the opening of a new London flagship, on which she has been working “like a bat out of hell”, situated, symbolically, on Bond Street.

What’s more, her name has been mentioned as a possible wedding dress designer for Meghan Markle. “I read this morning that you are designing the royal wedding dress,” I say to McCartney as she is preparing to leave. She laughs and raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Oh, you did, did you? You’re hilarious. How many designers have you said that to today?” That’s not a denial then, I point out. “Well, you didn’t actually ask a question.”