Imagine you’re a fashion designer at the apogee of an industry that, whichever way you slice it, is wasteful, sometimes cruel and aimed at planting the seeds of a desire that can never be slaked. Then suppose - crazy thought, this - that you have a conscience. What are you going to do about it?
If you’re Stella McCartney, you attempt mini-miracles: a deal with Gucci, one of the world’s premier leather brands, whereby they get to pump about £15 million into your label and you get to say you won’t work with animal skins. Then you get an itchy feeling about all the chemicals zipping around the average skincare range, so you launch your own organic line. And in an era of dedicated conspicuous consumption, you try to redefine luxury with clothes that don’t drip with bling, fur or obvious status symbols.
It’s easy to be cynical, as many have been, about Stella McCartney. She herself must have occasionally wondered whether being a vet or producing Animal Hospital wouldn’t have been more straightforward. But these days the detractors are fewer. As the bottles of McCartney’s scent, placed on the rows of seats at her show yesterday politely reminded, she is a British designer with an international reach. Having sustained hefty losses in the beginning, she’s on track to head a global business. The famous name didn’t hurt, but no one can say she didn’t put in the spadework. The H&M collaboration two years ago was a sell-out. The adidas partnership continues apace and she recently signed a deal with Bendon, the New Zealand company that produces Elle MacPherson’s lucrative line of underwear.
So that leaves the fashion collection, the flag-waver for her growing band of licences and therefore relevant and yet elitist. McCartney seems acutely aware of this gap: she wants lots of women to wear her designs. But short of personally subbing them, that’s not going to happen.
It’s this conflict that makes McCartney’s shows so interesting to watch, beyond the prettiness of the clothes themselves. And they are very pretty indeed. Next spring’s collection began with a series of floral chiffon dresses and (because this is McCartney and she likes to be a bit street) some jumpsuits, all of it confirming 2008 as the year of the flower. She hadn’t forgotten her tailoring roots, with double-breasted jackets and wide, flowy trousers.
But it was her just-around-the-knee, ivory chiffon dresses, with their ruffles in crumpled parachute silk, dipping, cutaway backs and loosely tied waists that made for some of the most desirable clothes so far.
Out they wafted, to the strains of Paul McCartney’s Blackbird. Ah, the simple life. Squint, and these gorgeous, floaty, kaftan/shift/smock hybrids could almost be something you picked up on holiday for a song. Closer study suggested they’ll be as cheap as a trip on NetJets. Subtle cream beading and quilting marks them out as stealth wealth purchases.
Giambattista Valli doesn’t do stealth wealth, but exquisitely constructed cocoons, with sharply delineated flounces and dramatically puffed sleeves, where every hour of painstaking craft is on show. These are trophy clothes for trophy bodies and ought to seem old-fashioned. But the scale of his strapless pouff dresses with their theatrical bows and pleats makes them modern, almost avant-garde. He would have been a natural to take over from Valentino. But perhaps he’s better off building his own brand.
On the subject of construction, one of McCartney’s clogs deconstructed in front of the audience, the sole detaching from the straps and depositing itself on the catwalk. Not the most effective way to wean the fashion pack off fur, crocodile and other forms of über-luxury. But you gotta love the girl for trying.
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