Stella McCartney: ‘It’s not like I’m right here for an easy life’

I am standing in the Old Bond Street headquarters of Stella McCartney’s style empire, ready to interview the clothier and questioning why large moist rocks are surrounded through the moss on the shop floor. I ask the exposure assistant, and it’s far without a doubt a coincidence that the fictitious individual Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous pops into my thoughts after she replies, in a voice imbued with significance and reverence: “Nature.”

Alongside the luxurious clothing, there is additionally unique, clean air piped into every room to fight the pollution of relevant London, a ball pit for rich youngsters to play in (at least, I don’t suppose any other type come in here) and a 3-hour jamming session of authentic Paul McCartney tune playing on repeat, as Stella explains once I meet her in a personal room at the pinnacle ground. Limited-edition variations of her clothes grasp all around us, stored for favored customers who make it into this locked region.

Indeed, it seems that the rocks had been shipped down from Paul’s farm at the Mull of Kintyre, wherein mist rolls in from the sea – the mist now rolls into his daughter’s clothes, seemingly. “I become like, Dad, this is weird…” she explains, “however, can I have a few rocks?”

Stella is bright-eyed and perky, pretty frank, open, and has the way of a person no longer put on this earth to waste time. I ask if we’re in a VIP room, but she groans and says that once somebody called it that during the planning tiers, she responded that they might now not be running together with her for terribly lengthy if they used that phrase again. I think it is politically essential to Stella to be seen as impartial, which has to be tough while you’re promoting fluffy jumpers for a grand.

Anyway, the award-prevailing fashion designer, forty-seven, is wearing layers of matching beige neutrals these days, of her very own layout, of the path. We are here to speak about a brand new collection she has created, referred to as All Together Now, stimulated by the 1968 Yellow Submarine movie based totally on tune via her father and his fellow Beatles. She has usually been a proud bearer of her mother Linda’s vegetarian credentials, going to excellent lengths to keep away from any use of leather and fur. But diving right into the Beatles legacy is something new.

But first, we need to talk about the store itself, of which Stella is similarly proud. She was precise about the rocks, she says after her dad agreed to free up them. “We needed to give a boost to the floors, to weight-bear them and all that sort of stuff, for my rock passion. And then, you realize, they weren’t pretty the proper color, so now we spray them.” Stella also wanted moss on them; however, the trouble with maintaining that going, as she explains, unluckily, “is that moss doesn’t really need to stay on Bond Street. In a shop.”

Kate Moss does, though. She is living thankfully above us on the wall, in a framed image together with her arm around Stella, taken soon when they commenced working together as dressmaker and muse when Moss walked in McCartney’s graduating style show Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in 1998. Their friendship has continued, with Kate even slicing the ribbon to open this very save in 2018 – it now being one of fifty-six stand-on my own Stella McCartney stores around the arena, which all stay authentic to their founder’s environmentalist roots by the usage of simplest LED lighting fixtures, saving seventy five% of the power of traditional bulbs, and sustainable wood and paper. The UK shops are all fuelled by way of wind power.