A London-based luxury fashion house, founded by Stella McCartney in 2001, built around fashion made without leather, fur, feathers or skin.
Stella McCartney is a luxury fashion house that designs women's, men's and children's clothing, bags, shoes, lingerie and accessories. It is best known for refusing to use leather, feathers, skin or fur, and for investing in new materials to replace them. Examples listed on its site include Mylo, a leather alternative made from mushroom roots, a handbag from grape-based materials, regenerated cashmere and sequins made from plant material. Its Falabella bag, launched in 2009, became one of its best sellers.
Stella McCartney graduated from Central Saint Martins in 1995 and became creative director of Chloé in Paris in 1997. She launched her own house in 2001, showing its first collection in Paris that October. The brand describes itself as a "conscious luxury movement". Stella says her values were inspired by her late mother Linda McCartney, a photographer, vegetarian and animal rights campaigner. Her partnership with adidas on performance wear began in 2004 and a menswear line followed in 2017. The brand's website says it became an independent fashion house in 2025.
In the UK, the brand has its flagship at 23 Old Bond Street in London, a 700 square metre store that opened in 2018, replacing an earlier shop on Bruton Street. At that opening, Stella McCartney said the company's business headquarters and design studio are in London. The store has features reflecting the brand's values, including an air-cleaning system and wall panels handmade from the brand's recycled office paper. We did not find a list of other UK sites, and the story is from 2018, so current details should be checked.
The brand's website points to long-term work on sustainability: environmental profit and loss reporting, a materials innovation exhibition at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, and support for the UN fashion climate charter. It also runs the Stella McCartney Cares Foundation, which supports sustainability and breast cancer awareness, and is a co-founder of the SOS Fund for nature-positive start-ups. These are the company's own claims. Stella is also a special sustainability adviser to LVMH. The campaign faces have included Idris Elba and Sofia Vergara.
Behind the scenes, a house like this needs designers, pattern cutters, material scientists and sourcing specialists who work with new fibres, buyers and merchandisers, shop teams, and people in communications, digital, finance and supply chain. If you care about animals and the planet, it is a place where those interests turn into daily work. The company's own site lists current roles.
Website: www.stellamccartney.com
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