Stella McCartney Now Wears Leather?

[Nemova]

as a avid thrift shopper and vegie, I too have struggled with this question, esp. when it comes to fur (which I could never bring myself to buy) to leather, which I do. The way I look at it is by shopping at a thrift my $ is NOT going to support a company/industy which makes its profits by harming/farming animals. It instead goes to a charitible organization. The items have alreay been made and bought (by the original owner) and I don't see how their winding up in a dump somewhere really helps anything...

But then you have a problem with the companies making money, and not with the cruelty against animals in general. I'm sorry, but it sounds incoherent to me.

 

[Oria]

from the article, continued:

Something changes shortly after this – as if she has let some sort of feeling through her defences – and McCartney starts talking about her mother, who died in 1998.

'She would have loved some of the things I've done recently,' she tells me. 'She would have loved all my veggie shoes and she would have dug the Adidas thing. She'd have loved the perfume. It's a bummer. At the weekend I really wanted to call her, talk crap down the phone. I didn't have anything to say, just sort of babble. She was the classiest woman I know. And class? You can't buy class, you know?

'She wasn't like Jackie O – you don't think of her like that – but just the way she handled herself and the decisions she made and the way she interacted with people was so fluid and natural and classy. It wasn't about her. It was about everyone else.'

I tell her that a journalist I know once almost fainted when he went to interview her father and that her mother had been sweet to him. She smiles.

'I would expect nothing less from my mother. People always have stories like that. "I met your parents once; your dad was in a bad mood and your mum came in and said, 'Do you want a cup of tea?'" It's really reaffirming to hear that.'

It seems to be all right now to talk about her family, to touch on her daily life. She spends the week in London, and the weekend in Worcestershire where she's having a garden made. ('Not cheap are they, gardens? Bloody hell. But part of the beauty of it is watching it grow. It's going to sound really naff on paper, that.')

At the moment she is 'being, like, this perfect role-model pregnant woman. I don't go out. I'm not drinking.'

She walks or cycles with her dog, a border collie called Red, in Hyde Park. She usually rides her horse Flo Jo as much as she can, but she's promised her husband – 'a good egg' – that she won't for the moment.

'My mum rode every single day, all of her life, but we're not as free as they were then. She was being a bit of a hippy living in Scotland when she had me. And if anything happened, I'd feel terrible. I'm not only responsible for myself and the baby. I've got Alasdhair to think about. I'll be back on my horse the moment I've squeezed it out. Can't wait.'

She met Willis at a meeting – his company was pitching for (and won) the contract to design her logo. (He wears amber – 'very masculine and sexy' – which, along with her mother's love of roses, was one of the inspirations for her perfume.) She's got some 'really amazing friends', but none from school – 'my school thing was wrapped around that learning experience of being a kid of someone. I was very wary and protective, jumpy, not very settled about it' – or from St Martins (where Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell modelled at her degree show).

'No. It was all fashiony. Everyone loved fashion and it was a bit, like, eugh.'

People like to say relations are strained between her and Phoebe Philo, whom she met at St Martins (and who has just had a baby). It would be a good opportunity to put the record straight, to congratulate Philo on being Designer of the Year perhaps, but she doesn't.

She's close to her siblings, she says – her half-sister, Heather, her older sister, Mary, and younger brother, James. And, though 'I would not be so immodest as to say I'm the best auntie in the world', she is 'madly in love' with Mary's two children. She doesn't mention Paul's daughter from his second marriage to the model Heather Mills. Neither her half-sister Heather nor her brother James has children, so Mary's, she says, 'are the only kids so far'.

At the end of the interview she looks tired. It's late Friday afternoon, but she has more meetings before she can go home. That morning she was at a costume-hire place doing research for her next collection ('Autumn/winter 2005,' says Stéphane). Her sales are reportedly up 65 per cent, her last collection had good reviews, and Robert Polet, the new chief executive of the Gucci group, has given her and the group's other eponymous label, Alexander McQueen, until 2007 to break even.

'I'm working at so many different million things at the same time,' she says. 'It's hard…'

As we stand up she wriggles her shoulders to stretch out her back. When she looks at her feet again, your heart goes out. The famous daughter, the fashion designer, the ordinary woman who makes mistakes.

'The cowboy boots I should have worn,' she says, 'are the ones from the last winter show – like, fake leather with canvas in the middle? And then it wouldn't have come up.'

Thank you very much for the article.

Ok now I have read and I see I can be a little less hard on here- but as someone said she has been hard on others, so I understand where everyone is coming from. But I think she is human we all do this.

I will still use leather and still eat my raw food. We all have a soapbox at one time or another, we just must prepare ourselves for the mishaps.

 

[mouko]

There are people who are 100% vegan and who are very devoted in their beliefs. Stella's brother James is an extreme vegan and won't even eat honey because it is an animal product.

Stella has spent her entire career denouncing leather and fur and denouncing anyone who works with or wears them. I distinctly remember an interview she did in which she chastized Phoebe Philo for designing leather bags and shoes for Chloe. She basically said that some people have no principles and are only in it for the money. She also had it written into her contract that she would use no leather or fur. All of a sudden she thinks "vintage leather" is OK? I find that odd. I am neither veggie nor vegan but I have a problem with someone who gets on a soap box preaching to others then does a 360 in order to be fashionable.

I do agree that she shouldn't be so vocal if she chooses to wear leather, even vintage one. Vegan diets do not include honey, but being 100% vegan is nearly impossible..you run into those tiny nuances such as bugs you step on when you walk, public items you use that have animal products (such as bus seats, chairs, airplanes..etc). By definition, vegans would be cramped up in their houses ordering takeout and even then, would probably end up growing their own foods, as the driver probably ran over a bunch of bugs on the way to their houses. There is really no way to be 100% vegan according to the definition.

 

[stylegurrl]

Impossibleprincess you are an angel! Thank you so much for posting the article.

 

[discostu]

But then you have a problem with the companies making money, and not with the cruelty against animals in general. I'm sorry, but it sounds incoherent to me.

I guess my point is I don’t want to cause any living animals any harm – as for the ones that have already been killed there’s nothing I can do for them. It’s a coat hanging in a shop. My main sticking point is the notion of continuing the idea of real fur as being glamorous (not that I am glam by any means). . And I know even vintage can also have its dark side… Case in point Kate Moss (who I ) wearing an APE fur coat… or so the caption said… that’s just creepy!

 

[mdankwah]

Whats with that Stepahane and his constant interruptions, it's like he needs to feed the woman the answers.

 

[Nemova]

I guess my point is I don’t want to cause any living animals any harm – as for the ones that have already been killed there’s nothing I can do for them. It’s a coat hanging in a shop. My main sticking point is the notion of continuing the idea of real fur as being glamorous (not that I am glam by any means). . And I know even vintage can also have its dark side… Case in point Kate Moss (who I ) wearing an APE fur coat… or so the caption said… that’s just creepy!

I get your point.

 

[lunabella]

i am a vegan, and i don't mind wearing the accessories that i bought before i was vegan. i also think there is nothing wrong with buying second-hand leather since you are not supposrting the leather industry/slaughter of animals by buying new items.

 

[Spacemiu]

Well it is hypocrtical, but I understand it, I don't eat meat, exept for sushi, but I wear some elather (belts mainly).

I'm still glad that people are making stylish animal free shoes though.

 

[Deleted member 7575]

It actually whould be hypocrtical for her to let the shoes go to waste and not wear them...think about it...

The cow has already been slain
the shoes have already been made
they have already been sold
the company already made a profit
and the company continued their practices supported by their sales and consumer demand...

NOW

Fast forward to where the shoes have been used for quite some time and find themselves in a vintage store and Mcartney buys them. Her purchase does not feed into the industry that promotes the slaying of animals for leather. Her money goes to the vintage store owners and no further. It's not because they aren't new that it is ok, it is that it's outside of the cycle and relatively benign.

What is more scandalous is her narrating a wool industry docmentary for peta that shows the horror of it and then goes on to show wool coat in her last collection.

 

[PrinceOfCats]

I'm very verbal.

Indeed.

Perhaps in Stella's special case, comprehensive schooling wasn't such a good idea.

 

[stylegurrl]

Mutterlein, you make a very excellent point, however I still have to disagree. There are beautiful non-leather shoes and boots out there that are comfortable and fashionable. Stella's own collections feature cruelty-free footwear. There was no justifiable reason for her to purchase those boots. She could have had some vegan cowboy boots made for her if she could not find suitable ones in the shops. Her purchase may not have directly supported the industry, but it indirectly supports it by telling the fashion conscious-"hey look, even an avowed animal rights person thinks leather boots are better" That's pretty bad imho.
If my memory serves me correctly, she also has a leather jacket with the KISS logo on the back. She wore it to some event once.

Wow, I didn't know about the wool industry documentary... Jeez...

 

[urd]

I'm a vegeterian and I wear leather, but unlike stella I never made a big fuss about animal rights and never designing anything with leather..

 

[roppal222]

Stella is talentless inside and out - Phoebe proved who was the real talent behind Chloe.


Supposed fashion designer - in reality just the spoilt brat daughter of a famous Beatle. Her only acheivements in life are:


designing Madonna's dress
having a few a-list friends who she poses with for credibility points


I've seen better designs in Mark-One


Vintage/current whatever...the girl is a hypocrite. Using her principle, all vegetarians lets unite and start eating meat because it's already dead, and I’ll still knowingly wear that top made by a slave child, cos they’ve already made it so no harm done. Let's just all back down on our principles for the sake of it...


She can justify it till she’s blue in the face, it only serves to make her look even more like the airhead pointless non-entity she actually is.


She’s a talentless car wreck.

 

[roppal222]

apologies for the rant guys but having had the misfortune of meeting with her , knowing what she's like and also seeing the way she publicly presents herself as some big political table thumper bleeding heart animal lover,yet knowing she contradicts herself behind closed doors, my dislike for her knows no limits....

 

[fab_fifties_fille]

stella, stick to your guns lady.

 

[Recycled]

Thanks so much for the article, i love Stella

 

[fie]

roppal222 Ditto to everything you said, and karma given

 

[sakina]

I'm a vegeterian and I wear leather, but unlike stella I never made a big fuss about animal rights and never designing anything with leather..

Same

I don't eat meat but do wear leather but I on the other hand, only speak about my vegetarianism in my defense. I don't have a problem with what Stella did but she doesn't have to make a big deal out of it and than contradict herself.

 

[leyla m.]

VINTAGE SCHMINTAGE


its all still leather in my books