Stella McCartney was born in 1971 to Paul and Linda McCartney. She interned at Edward Sexton’s Savile Row atelier from thirteen and apprenticed at Christian Lacroix. She studied at Central Saint Martins, graduated in 1995, and was named creative director of Chloé in 1997 at twenty-five — the appointment criticised as a product of name rather than merit. Her six years there, which preceded Phoebe Philo’s succession, were commercially successful.

The Vegan House

She launched Stella McCartney in 2001 with the Gucci Group as minority investor. Her founding constraint, unchanged through twenty-three years, is a refusal to use leather, fur, feathers, or any animal product. The constraint has forced the house to develop — substantially — the material innovations (mushroom-derived leather, cactus leather, bio-engineered viscose) that the broader luxury industry has since adopted.

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I am a designer who is a vegan. But I am a designer first. — Stella McCartney

The Adidas Collaboration

In 2004 McCartney launched Adidas by Stella McCartney, the first luxury-sportswear designer collaboration. It remains in continuous production — the longest such collaboration on record. In 2018 she bought back full ownership of the house from Kering; in 2019 she entered a strategic partnership with LVMH.