Over the past 10 years, Stella McCartney has been steadily amping up the volume of her sustainability voice as technology and opportunity give more and more breadth to vegetarian and sustainable fashion.
Her 2017 Fall collection has been launched - for advertising purposes at least, in a landfill site in Scotland featuring 3 of her models. The concept was an exploration of waste and consumption, two of McCartney’s key brand tenets. Now, fully 53 percent of her women’s collection is made from sustainable materials, and the brand is vegetarian.“The idea we had with this campaign is to portray who we want to be and how we carry ourselves; our attitude and collective path,” said McCartney. “Our man-made constructed environments are disconnected and unaware of other life and the planet, which is why there is waste.”Featured in the main pic, model Iana Godnia drew the short straw of lying on a pile of landfill garbage - household refuse. And here is the same dress (and shoes) on the runway at Opéra Garnier in Paris, presumably after cleaning.
McCartney cops her share of criticism around whether anyone actually cares what her 'skinny models are doing rolling around landfill in ridiculously expensive clothes' anyway.But the truth is that while runway fashion might not be coming to your entire neighbourhood's closets anytime soon, it does have a huge influence on mainstream fashion trends.McCartney is particularly focused on ocean plastics and noted for example, that 63 billion gallons of oil are used every year to supply just the U.S. with plastic water bottles. Most of these - more than 90 percent - are used only once. And of the 300 million tons of plastic produced every year, half of which is for single-use, 8 million tons is dumped into the oceans.Last month, McCartney revealed that her company had formed an ongoing partnership with Parley for the Oceans, an organization that collects plastic bottles from the ocean and puts them to better use. McCartney is using the yarn on the Adidas by Stella McCartney Parley Ultra Boost shoe for fall and other products.McCartney also uses Aquafil's 100 percent regenerated ECONYL® yarn - made from nylon waste, in her shoes and handbags. The yarn is made by diverting waste from landfills and oceans through the recovery of abandoned fishing nets and other discarded nylon waste. It offers the same quality and performance as traditional nylon, but with the ability to be regenerated an infinite number of times without any loss in quality. Every 10,000 tons of ECONYL® produced saves 70 thousand barrels of crude oil by avoiding extraction.