It's not about what it looks like in the studio or on the runway. It's what it looks like on a real person that matters.
Interpretation
The essence of clothing lies in how it fits and looks on real people, rather than just in a controlled or idealized setting.
Stella McCartney's quote emphasizes the importance of practicality and reality in fashion. It suggests that the true measure of clothing is not merely its appearance in a studio or on a runway, where settings are often idealized, but rather how it interacts with and enhances a real person's body and individuality. This perspective challenges superficial beauty standards and underscores the need for authenticity in fashion.
In practice
In a fashion show discussion, to highlight the importance of real-world application of designs.
I never want to promote an ad that makes women feel bad about themselves, because when I was young, I never felt rich enough or fashionable enough or good enough. I felt talked down to by luxury fashion labels. There was a disconnect. They made me feel we weren't right for each other.
I've had people say to me, 'You'll never sell handbags. You don't work with leather, and leather is luxury.' To me, it's the complete opposite: leather is everywhere - it's so cheap a material; it's so mass produced. Over 50 million animals a year are killed just for fashion. For me, it doesn't have a luxury element to it.
I think the moment that I'm very proud of is building a business without using animals. And, hopefully, changing people's perception of how you can do luxury fashion.
Fashion can be about escapism but I have always been interested in the aspirational side of it - wanting to present the self you hope eventually to become.
Vogue always did stand for people's lives. I mean, a new dress doesn't get you anywhere; it's the life you're living in the dress, and the sort of life you had lived before, and what you will do in it later.
What I think I sell with my clothes is confidence, so hopefully all my dresses, my accessories, are friends to the women. When you open the closet, and your eyes are swollen, and you don't like the way you look, you go to your friends.
When I started, I knew nothing about fashion. I remember, my first day going to my agency, I was wearing these huge bell-bottoms - they were patchwork corduroy and denim, which, at the time, I thought were amazing. My agent told me, 'You have a casting with Prada - you have to burn those jeans.'
It's the kind of clothes that mothers and daughters can wear, in terms of concept... It's not about age. It's about taste, and it's about lifestyle. I believe women of all ages can wear anything.
I think what I often see is that people are frightened about fashion. Because it scares them or makes them feel insecure, so they just put it down. On the whole people that may say the mean things about our world I think that’s usually because they feel, in some ways, excluded or, you know, not a part of ‘the cool group’ so as a result they just mock it.
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