By Kat Herriman
McCartney credits riding with shaping her lifelong love—and respect—for nature. Photo by Matteo Prandoni, Courtesy of Stella McCartney.
Before sustainability was cool, or something you could earn social credit for, Stella McCartney argued that fashion should take responsibility for its impact on the planet. When it launched in 2001, her namesake label made a light-year leap for the industry, becoming the first luxury house to go fur-, feather-, and leather-free—which was unthinkable at the time. By standing up for animal rights early, McCartney paved the way for a new generation of material scientists to develop alternative fabrics, knowing a bona-fide designer would be waiting to turn them into sought-after garments. With her Fall/Winter 2026 collection, the creative director reflects on what a quarter century of leading by example looks like.
The F/W 26 runway show, staged at a riding hall in Paris.
“From day one, we refused leather, fur, feathers, and skins,” McCartney says. “We’ve worked with spider silk spun in labs, grown handbags from mushrooms, and turned apple waste into shoes. We’ve saved hundreds of millions of animal lives, protected forests, and kept countless tons of waste out of landfills. And we’ve proved you don’t have to sacrifice craft, fit, or style to do the right thing.”
The collection arrives brimming with the evidence. It is chockablock with signature moves that have become brand codes over time, whether lingerie worn as outerwear or the interplay between the designer’s Savile Row polish and her nostalgia for the 1980s sportswear silhouettes of her youth.
It feels fitting that, given this season of reflection and its alignment with the Chinese zodiac Year of the Horse, McCartney decided to tell the brand’s story by returning to her own beginnings: a Scottish farm where riding shaped her lifelong love and respect for nature. The accompanying runway show, staged at a riding hall in Paris’s arcadia-like Bois de Boulogne, re-created the site of those early memories and used it as a point of departure, showcasing an equestrian-forward collection built on decades of innovation since that first call to action.
The show, which achieved 93 percent sustainable fabrication (a milestone for the brand), featured many of the alternative materials the designer has pioneered and mastered in prior collections, including regenerative cotton and plant-based sequins, alongside the debut of two new fabrics: one for knits and one for denim. These materials, with their resource-sensitive processes and regeneration-supportive engineering, point past animal welfare to the health and safety of all living things that the fashion industry touches. “The same hidden industries that exploit animals also endanger workers, pollute communities, and strip away dignity. When we talk about sustainability, we must talk about human welfare too,” McCartney says about the pernicious issue. “Fashion is not just about what we wear. It is about the health of our planet, our people, and our future. Believe that change is possible, because it is.”
A leader at the helm of a mighty and slow-to-turn ship for more than two decades, McCartney reaches us through her powerful words and new collection. She does so as a beautiful prophet might—wearing 100-percent recycled denim and Chantilly lace accents, of course.
