Michael Jackson’s daughter between two Beatles on the front row, and a Spice Girl backstage with Charlotte Rampling. David Byrne on the mood board and an apple-leather mock-croc vegan trenchcoat with a sparkling mesh swimsuit made from recycled aluminium sequins on the runway. Kate Moss’s daughter catwalking in a turquoise minidress of responsibly sourced alpaca to a soundtrack of an environmental manifesto voiced by Olivia Colman and Helen Mirren. It can only be the Stella McCartney show.
“Well, I mean, we’re in a bit of a state here, aren’t we?” said McCartney of the slogan vest that read “About Fucking Time”. “I always want the platform of Stella McCartney to have an environmental message. I am here to remind people that this is one of the most harmful industries. But I’m not here to make people depressed and scared. I want to celebrate Mother Earth and all of her creatures and to remind us all to be conscious of that, but at the same time, I want it to be an uplifting experience.”
McCartney is determined that the planet-wrecking version of fashion should not get a monopoly on glamour. Sustainability, she says, should be invisible on the runway. The show began with a rose-pink trouser suit, unbuttoned with nothing underneath, redolent of Rampling-esque sauciness, worn under a powder-puff faux-fur coat that Alexis Colby would have coveted.
There were lashings of glossy “leather”, made from a bio-based alternative that uses agricultural waste and recycled material. A cobweb of lead-free crystals over bare skin channelled this Paris fashion week’s lascivious appetite for naked dressing. A lip motif on a scant silk dress represented womanhood, sensuality and the voice of Mother Earth, but “the clothes should never be compromised”, she said backstage.