“As a child I was taught to respect animals, I grew up vegetarian, I worked on an organic farm and when I had the opportunity to become a fashion designer, I didn’t want to be a hypocrite. I can’t kill millions of animals just to make a bag Or some shoes.”
Stella McCartney’s reflections in an interview in Vogue Paris summarize the commitment of the designer and activist, a pioneer in promoting eco-responsible fashion in the industry. And not die trying. Daughter of former Beatle Paul McCartney and activist Linda McCartney, her parents raised her with an environmental conscience. She does not understand life otherwise.
Now, he is one of the most powerful independent voices in fashion and oxygenates the planet with a loud and forceful message: let’s change history. “When I started I was ridiculed. They told me that I would not be able to create a successful brand. Over time I have shown them wrong, ”she says. “It is vitally important to start moving now. It took me three years to produce organic viscose and another three to develop a new synthetic leather”, acknowledges the designer.
Peta – who has collaborated closely with Stella McCartney – has also played an important role in this change in mindset, combining aggressive protest tactics with media campaigns to steer the fashion industry away from wearing fur.
Now the organization wants to make such conventional materials as wool, leather and down equally unacceptable. The sense of luxury has already excluded fur, and increasingly leather, also on the sustainability blacklist. Every year more than 300 million cows are slaughtered for organic leather and meat. Livestock is responsible for 16.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Data that are added to those of the textile industry, one of the most polluting according to the last United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. In water alone, it consumes more than 90 billion liters a year, enough to supply five million people.
Stella was a visionary. And she created school. Consumers are becoming more and more aware of the origin of the materials and the projects that are born under a cruelty free philosophy are multiplying. The transformation process of the rest of the firms has been a change at forced marches. An adapt or die. Modernize or remain anchored in a past in danger of extinction.
‘TO THE FUTURE GENERATIONS: This is a message for those who are not yet, but will be. Those who will create and lead the future. Until that time comes, each one of us is responsible for you having the world you deserve. For this reason, since 1975, at Camper, from humility, we have set ourselves the challenge of being a little better every day. Our values ??and experience have led us to always think in the long term, creating shoes of the highest quality, more durable and more responsible with the planet. The future is yours.’
‘DEAR PLANET: Although I knew it, it was not predetermined in my being, but when I started this journey I started a commitment with myself, and that meant doing it with you. My purpose, my eyes, my voice, are my legacy. Our legacy. For 30 years, and to take care of you hundreds of years more. Because taking care of you is taking care of me. And my wild woman. I am more of a city than asphalt, I live connected to hundreds of people and screens and much less connected to you than I would like. But from the showroom I feel you through my team, their hands, their art, from the braided raffia and the cotton, from the rush we stop being in and from the time we invest in thinking and doing. Humanity, roots, future, promise, life. We are together in this.’
‘TO MY ME FROM THE PAST: The birth of your sons Alfredo and Álvaro will drive you to create Ecoalf to try to create a different company. What you do is no longer enough. Anyone can make a t-shirt, but what is the footprint of that t-shirt in the world? We cannot use natural resources indiscriminately. Don’t worry, people won’t understand what it means to make garments with recycled materials and the concept of circularity. And that is why you will give life to a sustainable brand that shows that recycled products can be created with the same quality and design as non-recycled ones. The path will not be easy, but surrounded by magnificent activists it will be an exciting challenge.’
‘DEAR NEIGHBOR: Today we saw you again taking down the garbage. Don’t panic, we weren’t watching you through the peephole, we’d just gone down the street to pick up the new It’s Lava prototypes. You carried a single bag for all your waste. Since we produce bags, we pay close attention to everything you can carry inside, we have even measured the waste we generate by the number of bags we could fill -a total of two maxi bags a week- It is a small gesture, but the Next time you can leave the cardboard at our door, we take it every day to the blue container, except our boxes, of course. They are so pretty that we always reuse them!’
