Stella McCartney

Stella Nina McCartney CBE (born 13 September 1971) is an English fashion designer. She is a daughter of English singer-songwriter Paul McCartney and American photographer and animal rights activist Linda McCartney. Like her parents, McCartney is a supporter of animal rights and environmentalism, and uses vegetarian and animal-free alternatives in her work. Since 2005, she has designed an activewear collection for Adidas.

Stella Nina McCartney was born on 13 September 1971, at King's College Hospital in Denmark Hill, Camberwell, London. She is named after her maternal great-grandmothers (both of Linda's grandmothers were named Stella). Her mother, Linda Eastman McCartney, was of Jewish ancestry. As a girl, McCartney travelled the globe with her parents and their group Wings, along with her siblings: older half-sister Heather (who was legally adopted by Paul), older sister Mary, and younger brother James. According to her father, the name Wings was inspired by Stella's difficult delivery. As his daughter was being born by emergency caesarean section, Paul sat outside the operating room and prayed that she would be born 'on the wings of an angel'.

Despite their fame, the McCartneys wanted their children to live as normal a life as possible, so Stella and her siblings attended local state schools in East Sussex, one of them being Bexhill College. McCartney has said that while attending state school, she was a victim of bullying yet she had been a bully herself.

McCartney became interested in designing clothes as a youth. At the age of 13, she designed her first jacket. Three years later, she interned for Christian Lacroix, working on her first haute couture collection, honing her skills while working for Edward Sexton (her father's Savile Row tailor) for a number of years.

McCartney studied her foundation at Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication now Ravensbourne University London, followed by fashion design at Central Saint Martins in the early 1990s, graduating in 1995. Her graduation collection was modelled for free by friends and supermodels Naomi Campbell, Yasmin Le Bon and Kate Moss, at the graduation runway show, presented to a song especially written by her father, "Stella May Day".

A lifelong vegetarian, McCartney uses no leather or fur in her designs. The Guardian described her in 2015 as a 'consistent and vocal' supporter of animal rights. Some of McCartney's designs have text that elaborates on her 'no animal' policy; one of her Adidas jackets carries a sleeve that says 'suitable for sporty vegetarians'. A pair of her vinyl and ultrasuede boots were marketed specifically as vegan-friendly, though her use of oil-based synthetics still raised ecological concerns.

In 1997, McCartney was named the creative director of Chloé, a position she held until 2001.

In 2001, McCartney launched a fashion house under her name, in a joint venture with Gucci Group (now Kering), and presented her first collection in Paris. She now operates 51 freestanding stores in Manhattan's Soho, London's Mayfair, LA's West Hollywood, Paris's Palais Royal, Barcelona's Passeig de Gracia, Milan, Rome, Miami and Houston, among other locations.