Stella McCartney on family, ageing and empowering women: ‘I never felt fashionable enough’
It’s slightly discombobulating hearing Stella McCartney talk about the challenges of engaging with young people. Can it really be that much of a stretch? Then I remember she’s 44.
Like her dad, Macca, there’s an eternally youthful Tiggerish-ness to her. Is it the vulnerable cast to those cartoonishly large, occasionally hurt-looking eyes? The quick bounce back? The apple cheeks? The stylishly sporty silk track pants, worn with men’s brogues? ‘Flat-fronted, elasticated waist, ribbed hems,’ she enumerates helpfully. ‘I practically live in them at the moment.’
There’s a bit of shoulder robing going on as well, with a tangerine cashmere coat, a lightly tanned, smooth face (does she, doesn’t she? I don’t know, and it seems rude to ask). Whatever she’s doing, it’s all working. She looks elegantly modern.
There’s also the girlish voice, somewhat at odds with some of her weightier, chewier utterances. When she tells me about the way she deals with some of her five- and nine-year-old daughters’ more controversial clothes choices (‘I say to them, “Explain to me what is it you like about that?”’), she sounds like a head girl trying – and frankly failing – not to be bossy.
We’re in a white cube of an office at her HQ on the outskirts of Notting Hill. It’s not until 10 minutes in that I realise her PR is sitting in. He’s hidden by a large computer screen. Then again, I’d understand if she never gave another interview at all. There was a time when she seemed to have decided not to. The issues that wind her up – animal welfare, the environment, longevity, the way fashion engages, or doesn’t, with young women – are so hard to square with the business in which she’s been working, with no small success, for more than 20 years, that she’s always going to lay herself open to accusations of hypocrisy. That’s before we get to her understandable desire for complete privacy.
By: Lisa Armstrong
Source: The Telegraph
