Stella McCartney Dishes to PORTER: Her Celebrity Childhood, Crying at Work & 15 Years In the Biz

by Kristen Heinzinger
Stella McCartney

(L-R) Selma Blair wears jumpsuit by Stella McCartney; Stella wears shirt by Stella McCartney; Nicole Richie wears dress (underneath) and dress (on top) by Stella McCartney; Jennifer Meyer wears dress by Stella McCartney, photographed by Bjorn Iooss for PORTER.

It’s been 15 years since Stella McCartney launched her label, and to celebrate, PORTER joined the designer at her L.A. home for an anniversary bash. For the Spirit of Summer issue, PORTER features director Vassi Chamberlain chats with McCartney, while Bjorn Iooss photographed her with some of her famous friends, like Quincy JonesSelma Blair, and Jennifer Meyer. Below, highlights from McCartney’s intimate interview—get the full story when the issue hits newsstands tomorrow. 

On 15 years in biz…
“I never put a number on it. I’m just getting on with it. I’m more intrigued to see how much we’ve changed and not changed, to see kind of… You know it’s very interesting for us as a house because we’re not doing the same stuff as everyone else.” 

On being a “celebrity kid” and starting out in fashion…
“You know I was probably an interesting person to, I don’t know, kind of dissect and judge. Put your own fashion stuff onto that. I was probably the first one that was like, ‘Oh, she’s a celebrity kid,’ there was a lot of newness in that. Whereas now everyone’s a fashion designer. I think my differences were and my differences still are that I don’t really approach fashion in a fashiony way. I was never drawn just into fashion. I was drawn into it because I am really interested in serving women and providing women with solutions, trying to figure out what we need and why we need that and why we wear stuff, how it makes us feel. That was always my starting point, you know.”

On her mother Linda’s style…
“I really admired the honesty in the way she wore clothes, she didn’t give a toss what people thought. She had a quirky style. She was rock’n’roll. When everyone else was doing punk she was doing grunge. And she wore a lot of vintage stuff, a lot of 1940s tea dresses. That’s why when I went to Chloé I did a lot of that kind of dress. I was very much attracted to her confidence in a really gentle vulnerable way, like she wasn’t trying to be anyone she wasn’t.”

On how Linda influenced her career in fashion…
“She was very vulnerable in her position as Paul McCartney’s wife and she was on stage with him to sort of be a wife and a mother, and she was living a public life but in a really kind of weirdly un-public way. You know, look at all the other wives of that period, they weren’t cutting their own hair, they weren’t not wearing makeup. I think that had a big influence on me entering fashion in a way that was more ‘Who are you as a woman, how can I help you? Can I do something tiny, can I just put a little flower on a blouse, a daisy, that will actually lift you, remind you of your mother…’”

On being surprised by her success…
“I knew I didn’t want to go into my parents’ jobs because I didn’t want to give anyone the credit of being able to judge me openly. Which is ironic. But I didn’t think I’d get particularly noticed. I thought I’d be able to slip under the radar and just get on with it.”

On staying power and how you should never compromise for money…
“My grandpa Lee always used to say to me ‘staying power’ – that was his thing. He was a very impressive man, amazing man… I was like, if I can have staying power, that’s a real achievement. You know, my father’s talent somehow made money. So I’m lucky my stability allowed me to be myself. I have never compromised myself for money because I’m allowed to do that, thank God. And so when you talk about an anniversary, I’m like, we’re very young for a fashion house, like it’s baby steps, but I feel we have the potential to have staying power and so I’m very proud.”

On being the boss and her work-life balance…
“Time for me is not up for conversation, that one’s not there yet. I’m hoping we try to do it before the breakdown. Some days I get overwhelmed and a bit breathless… I’ve probably cried at work, but I’m limited with my crying; I’m the boss, I’m not really allowed to cry at work.”

On famous friends…
“I did have quite a different upbringing to a lot of my peers. We all have a sort of code that we get, especially as Beatles kids, we’re kind of… it’s an unspoken sort of word of understanding, you know? But I’m comfortable around a lot of different types of people. And people always want to ask me about my famous friends, and I’m always like: ‘yeah, I’ve got a lot of famous friends, but I grew up around that and I’m not kind of… you know, yeah, it’s great, like there’s a greatness to it, but I’m also a bit like I’ve also got a really great bunch of girls that are godmothers and they are not famous.”

On exposure as a child to crazy famous people…
“I lived on a farm, but I went on tour and I knew crazy famous people, like crazy. And for my children, it’s not dissimilar, they go to the farm and they’re in the field getting muddy and falling over, and then they come here and they’re surrounded by crazy famous people. I worry about that. But I think I turned out okay-ish, and I hope that they will be okay.”

On her children’s relationship with their “GrandDude”…
“I love seeing them with Grandpa, or GrandDude, as they call him, they’re really proud of him and they get excited by it (Sir Paul McCartney’s music)… They have a great relationship with him.”

On casting Madonna’s daughter Lourdes Leon in the campaign for her new scent…
“It was a massive compliment she felt safe doing that with me, because everyone and their uncle has asked her to do things. It’s very funny for me, she was the one where I was like ‘I get it, I get it, I’m there. Been there, done that, I know exactly who you are, I know exactly what you’re going through.’”

You may also like

Leave a Comment