Stella standing
The British fashion designer tells Jing Zhang how she keeps the industry at arm's length and why she will never, ever use leather
''I'm not totally immersed in that whole fashion world," says British fashion designer Stella McCartney. "I obviously have friends and colleagues, and we are all in fashion, but I'm definitely not deep in it. I keep a healthy distance.
"I have the safety of my private life, and I am very protective of that," insists the rock star's daughter, dressed in a T-shirt and blazer, her strawberry blond hair up in a casual ponytail. "At weekends I ride my horse. And after work I bathe my kids and put them to bed."
McCartney, in town in May at the end of an Asian tour promoting her label, has been joined in Hong Kong by close friend Kate Moss. We are sitting unobtrusively at the back of the MO Bar, in the Landmark Mandarin Oriental hotel, where no one seems to recognise the daughter of Sir Paul McCartney, one quarter of arguably the most famous band ever to have strapped on guitars.
"I've had it all my life, obviously, so it's something that I try not to pay too much attention to," says McCartney, of being the offspring of a Beatle. "It's just about trying to get on with it and doing the best that I can. It would be stupid to say it didn't slam some doors and create some preconceived ideas of me. But at the same time it opened a lot of avenues and opportunities for me."
Both McCartney's parents - her mother was the late photographer/musician/animal-rights activist Linda McCartney - were influential in shaping her sense of style. As a child, for example, she remembers discovering glittery knee-high platforms and little vintage floral dresses in her mother's wardrobe.
"With dad it was obviously the Savile Row suits and funky T-shirts. Then there were [mum's] bespoke suits; women didn't wear men's tailoring at that stage. In fact, she was really a pioneer of that.
"The psychological side of fashion has always driven me," McCartney says. "Even when I was really young, I didn't want to be a designer because, 'woah, fashion is so glamorous'. It was about … how it makes you feel and how it's such a huge reflection of who you are."
