Stella McCartney on why the fashion industry should be rewarded for being greener

When British fashion designer Stella McCartney sat down with journalists in the imposing marble stairwell of Paris’s Palais Garnier, on the eve of her spring/summer 2020 show, she put a question to her audience. “We’ve seen millions of people marching [for the environment] this week, but not many people in the fashion industry posted those pictures and I was surprised. How can they be encouraged to make it fashionable?”

In the days following 16-year-old Greta Thunberg’s impassioned speech at the United Nations climate summit, concerns as to whether climate change is not being taken seriously enough by the industry have left an indelible mark this fashion month. Designers using their spring/summer 2020 platform to draw attention to the cause have included Maria Grazia Chiuri at Dior – who partnered with innovative urban planting collective Coloco to surround her catwalk with 164 native European trees, which they planned to replant after the show. 

“We know that we’re part of the problem, but we’re trying to think of what we can do through our business to actually make things better,” explains Clare Bergkamp, Stella McCartney’s innovation and sustainability director. 

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Primarily, this means new technology – the result of years of research at Stella McCartney Ltd – which has propelled the brand into an advanced position on sustainability, enabling it to share its lessons learned with the industry at large. This includes work with Bolt Threads, a San Francisco based biotechnology company that produces fibres engineered from spider silks and MyloTM, a leather based on mycelium mushrooms.

Stella McCartney doesn’t claim to have the solution to the environmental crisis, but she does offer prescient advice to both consumers and her peers in the fashion community. 

On the changes consumers can make today:
Stella McCartney [SM]: “Giving up meat is the no-brainer. It’s scary, we’re all terrified and we don’t want to feel guilty or bad. We also need to understand the impact of leather and the animal glues that are used in fashion; next time you go to buy a bag or a pair of shoes, just ask yourself if you really need it.”

On attracting next-generation talent:
SM: “I was privileged, I grew up on an organic farm and I saw the seasons. My parents were vegetarians, they were change agents – I took that way of looking at the world into my work, to create a product which is still sexy, desirable and luxurious, that isn’t landfill. The people who want to work in the fashion industry now (and it will be even more so in five or 15 years time) want to work in a company that has ethics, and that goes for every business. They want to work in a place that has good moral grounding. What I do everyday in my place of work is to for better practice in the fashion industry.”

On educating ourselves about what our clothes are made from:
SM: “I’m trying to encourage people to be more mindful about what we consume. Rayon (also known as viscose) comes from wood pulp. This year alone up to 150 million trees have been cut down to create viscose. It’s one of the most widely used fabrics in the fashion industry. I’ve spent three years of my life trying to find a solution, so we get all of our viscose pulp from a sustainable forest in Sweden. This is the knowledge that I want to bring to my industry. We need to give people the information so they have a more informed way of purchasing and have a better way of buying.”

On incentivising the fashion industry to be greener:
SM: “[Designers] need to be incentivised. I’ve been doing this my whole career, but I get penalised when I take a non-leather goods into the United States, I get taxed up to 30 per cent more because it’s not made out of leather. We need to give people a reward for doing things better.”