Amber Valletta didn’t wear the draped gold chain top she originally wore with white denim hot pants in that same show (someone else did, with an added white tank top underneath), but she did wear a tailored jumpsuit like the one Raquel Zimmermann wore in McCartney’s eponymous spring/summer 2009 show.
The Hadids brought the Noughties nostalgia full circle: Gigi in a sculpted cargo suit that echoed McCartney’s Savile Row days; Bella in a shrunken vest and low-riding trousers with rhinestone-encrusted cut-outs around the hips.
Below, Anders Christian Madsen spoke to McCartney about her reasons for revisiting her Y2K self.
What made you want to revisit pieces from your graduate and Chloé collections?
I collaborated with [Yoshitomo] Nara, who is one of the most incredible artists alive today. He and I are very aligned on our way of approaching the world, which is being at once with nature and animals, and to be pretty punk rock and rebellious and have a message in our work. How do we change the history? That was the overriding theme of this show.
I collaborated with [Yoshitomo] Nara, who is one of the most incredible artists alive today. He and I are very aligned on our way of approaching the world, which is being at once with nature and animals, and to be pretty punk rock and rebellious and have a message in our work. How do we change the history? That was the overriding theme of this show.
What does that mean?
I want to look back at my history and redefine where I started and where I am now and what the next Stella looks like. So, there were pieces from my past that were referenced.
How does it make you feel to see all these kids wearing the things you designed twenty years ago?
It makes me feel extremely old! My daughter, who’s fifteen, all she does now is go into my closet and take all my original things. And I’m like, ‘Oh, but I have similar things now?’ She’s not interested. She just wants the ’90s.
You brought back the low-riding trouser in a big way.
I always wear everything pretty much low-slung. I think it’s all about comfort, really, and I think one of the gifts of being a female designing for females – a woman designer, which, by the way, there are not enough of at the heads of houses, and it’s important to say that – I try on all the clothes when I fit. It’s critical to me the difference between two millimetres and two centimetres and two inches. It’s life-changing. To me, that gives a clear message of being easy, effortless and sexy. It’s like, bring sexy back at Stella!
“Change the history” means referencing your past in new, more sustainable ways. What sustainable measures went into this collection?
We’ve got the regenerative cotton, which I’m not sure anyone has been able to do on a runway before. We’ve been piloting it for three years. It’s completely bio-diverse, which means that it encourages nature, which is the most amazing thing about it. Normally, we’re a hundred percent organic cotton, but we’ve now brought the regenerative cotton into some of the pieces.
With 87 per cent of the materials being conscious, this is your most sustainable collection ever. What other techniques did you use?
All the faux leather, the vegan shoes, the plant-based materials. And then we have the mushroom leather, which is great – the first mycelium leather bags – and tonnes of other stuff. Because the mycelium mushroom is so cutting-edge, we are only able to manufacture a thousand bags at the moment, so we did a limited edition of a hundred. In the rhinestones, we don’t use any animal glues and we don’t use the solvents that normal rhinestones have, which means we have fewer colours and scales to choose from, so it’s a very different process. But hopefully it looked fabulous nonetheless.
As sustainability adviser to LVMH, how are you impacting the company?
I think the fact that Mr Arnault is sitting there and can look at all those bags, all those shoes, all those non-leather jackets, and can compare with all his other houses and see that there is no sacrifice visually, or in make, or in quality, is really important. The regenerative cotton was a pilot that they funded. We’re a smaller house so we couldn’t necessarily afford that three-year investment. And so now they can see it. We have a faux leather that uses the waste grape skins from vineyards, so I’m trying to make his vineyards do that. That’s the exciting thing for me: to show the rest of the world. I have this incredible seat at the table and I want to infiltrate from within.
Why did you stage the show outside?
I wanted to have more of an inclusive runway show, so anyone who wanted to come see a runway show could come. The exclusivity and elitism of the fashion industry is not really my vibe. This collection is really approachable and wearable, and I wanted to bring people in.
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