PARIS — Stella McCartney declared war on the fishing industry at Paris Fashion Week on Wednesday, 25 years into a label that has never used leather, fur or feathers — on a rain-soaked runway in the British ambassador's gardens, with Jennifer Lopez under an umbrella in the front row.
Her case began with vocabulary: the same animals are “sea life” when people marvel at them and “seafood” when they order.
“Who makes that decision?” she said backstage.
Of the industry that stocks the menu, she was blunter: “It’s war. We’re at war with the oceans.”
For one piece of fish on a plate, she said, the nets bring up dolphins and octopuses, and most of the catch goes back over the side dead.
Through the greenery, models walked to PJ Harvey’s “Down by the Water,” a murder ballad that keeps its promise.
Juliette Binoche sat near Lopez. On the runway, Karlie Kloss and Miranda Kerr came dressed in waves.
Suits that swim
The clothes made the case more gently.
The palette ran seafoam, sage, coral, blush and chocolate, and the tailoring — schooled under Savile Row’s Edward Sexton — loosened until it moved like water.
Drawstrings threaded through oversized blazers, a rain-jacket trick smuggled into office clothes.
The back-on-trend peplums were everywhere — and rounded softly at the hip.
Sheer layers left bandeaus and brief-cut shorts in the open, on the season’s underwear-as-outerwear tide.
Sport, her other signature, answered back: second-skin leggings under boxy technical jackets and airbrushed dolphins mid-leap across T-shirts.
Kloss’ minidress had small waves curling over one shoulder; Kerr’s seafoam gown was cinched in a knot at the waist.
For evening, gowns wound around the torso and dropped in unbroken columns, after Madame Grès, with ruffles breaking like surf at the hems.
“It’s really, really important to want to wear the clothes,” McCartney said. “For me, that’s the main thing.”
Message in a bottle
The house called the ready-to-wear 100% responsible: recycled cotton denim, organic cotton and silk, and a black pigment grown from algae rather than refined from oil.
Older fronts are better supplied: the certified wool she uses is traced back to the farm, and since 2026 she has knitted with Brewed Protein, a wool alternative fermented by Japanese biotech firm Spiber.
A week before the show, McCartney co-founded The Climate Pledge Fashion Coalition with Amazon and the forest nonprofit Canopy, pooling the orders of more than 60 companies so such materials can reach factory scale.
She bought back LVMH’s minority stake in her label last year, but still advises its chief, Bernard Arnault.
“I’m advising him on so many things in sustainability,” she said.
McCartney took her bow in jeans, a white T-shirt and a roomy blazer, thumbs up, and was gone.
Backstage, when the questions finally drifted from oceans to hemlines, she asked one of her own: “You mean you want to talk about the clothes?”
After 25 years, they are still her best argument.
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