Stella McCartney

Stella McCartney is a British designer who led Chloé from April 1997 to 2001 before founding her namesake house with Gucci Group. Recruited at 25 after Chloé president Mounir Moufarrige visited her London studio, she brought Central Saint Martins classmate Phoebe Philo to Paris as a design assistant and close studio collaborator.

McCartney’s Chloé collections replaced the house’s early-1990s polish with wide trousers, lingerie dresses, comic print, vintage references and a younger casting culture. Spring/Summer 1998 was her runway debut; Spring/Summer 2001’s horse, fruit and pineapple motifs became enduring images; and Autumn/Winter 2001 closed her tenure. See by Chloé was announced under her direction for a Fall 2001 launch.

Her independent brand extended a refusal of leather, fur and skins into a global luxury business, material-research programme and long-running Adidas partnership. Tailoring, sportswear and environmental accounting have remained connected parts of that practice.

McCartney sets Savile Row-informed tailoring against lingerie, stretch, sportswear and humour. At Chloé, low-slung trousers, slip dresses, spray-painted sunsets and horse or fruit motifs made luxury feel informal and culturally immediate.

At her own house, that opposition became part of a wider material system. Masculine cut and fluid dress are developed without leather or fur, while regenerative fibres, recycled inputs and new material technologies are treated as design constraints rather than supplementary messaging.