A Stella McCartney show hits different: For starters, “About F—king Time” caps were placed on every seat along with a copy of The Stella Times, a newspaper detailing the British designer’s conscious approach to luxury and her accomplishments.
The spring 2025 collection was realized with 91 percent sustainable materials and several guests toted the new Ryder bag, a 100 percent vegan top-handle style with a sloped back like a saddle-less horse, one of the designer’s favorite animals, though she loves them all, including birds.
Birds tweeted on the carnival-like soundtrack that accompanied arriving guests including Rob Lowe, Juliette Binoche, Tiffany Haddish, Natalie Portman and former Chanel designer Virginie Viard, a longtime fan of McCartney. “I love the whole personality,” she said, wearing a black bomber jacket printed to give the impression of fur.
The open-air show was visited by rain showers, a bumblebee that sent Jameela Jamil scrambling and chucking her half-eaten croissant over a fence, and other beautiful creatures like Natalia Vodianova, sheepishly scrambling to her seat last minute.
The collection flitted confidently between masculine archetypes — strong-shouldered tailoring, often pinstriped, and boyishly baggy jeans — and sexier fare: clinging knit dresses and bandeau tops, or sheer, sensually draped dresses, which seem to be everywhere this European season.
McCartney is a minimalist at heart, and she adds drama to her clothes with volume, sparkles, trailing streamers and lots of toned abs. Accessories were accentuated, especially Ryder bags ranging in size from mini to microwave, plus hand-carved dove jewelry made of gold and silver repurposed from photocopiers and medical X-rays.
In a backstage scrum, McCartney said the “About F—king Time” slogan, reprised from a tank top she wore in 1999 when her father Sir Paul was finally inaugurated into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, could apply to many things, but she surely intended a call to action on environmental issues.
“For me, it’s about f—king time that we stopped killing animals for fashion,” she said. “About one and a half billion birds are killed for fashion a year… For some reason nobody likes cows, but birds? Everybody loves birds.”
Hence not a single feather was plucked for McCartney’s collection. Instead there were doves printed on airy silk dresses, Prince crooning how they shouldn’t cry, and puffball bomber jackets that truly resembled fluffy chicks. The designer explained they were made from recycled plastic bottles extruded into a cloud-like material.
“We’re a very strange fashion house, in a sense, because obviously we have sustainability and stopping animal cruelty at the core of everything that we do, and then you have to couple that with the fact that I’m a fashion designer, and I want it to just look effortless and beautiful,” she said.
In the end, her show had an uplifting and inspiring effect, egged on by Helen Mirren intoning over the music: “A world where there are only planes in the sky, and no song in the trees, will never make the heart soar.”
For more Paris spring 2025 reviews, click here.
