Stella McCartney has begged for fur to be banned amid the COP26 UN climate conference.
In the summer, the 50-year-old fashion designer, animal rights activist, and environmentalism’s eponymous fashion label joined forces with Humane Society to campaign to end the use of fur for fashion.
And as COP26 got underway in Glasgow, Stella opened the ‘Future of Fashion: An innovation conversation with Stella McCartney’ exhibit at the Scottish city’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum this week, which she attended to call for legislation to be created to stop animals being culled for fashion.
Speaking to Forbes magazine at the launch, Sir Paul McCartney’s daughter said: “I’m here today because I’m begging for policy to be put in place for the fashion industry.”
Stella also called on fast-fashion retailers to cut their produce to help flatten their carbon footprint, and she insisted it’s still possible to have “a sexy, well-designed” product and make money with a “cleaner, more sustainable” approach.
She explained: “Fast fashion [brands] obviously need to reduce what they produce.
“I want to show my industry that you can have a business model in working in a cleaner, more sustainable way. You don’t have to kill and don’t have to cut down rainforests, and you can have a sexy, well-designed, lasting, beautiful bag. I’m here to show that you can still make money.”
Stella said those who are “killing animals” and “cutting down our rainforests” have blood on their hands and should feel guilty.
She added: “There’s this kind of mindset, that killing animals just for handbags, slaughtering them, skinning them, cutting down our rainforests is fine, that’s capitalism, and that’s how we should make money. I’m like – that should be guilt, you should feel bad when you work in that way.”
Items on display at the exhibit included futuristic vegan football boots – which were created in partnership with Adidas and Manchester United star Paul Pogba – and luxury handbags made with vegan, lab-grown mushroom leather.
Stella met with Prince Charles and Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio at the event, before she took part in a discussion with industry experts about ending the use of fur and animal leather.
Stella said: “I want to highlight my industry and call it out, we’re one of the most harmful industries in the world to the environment and what I’m doing here is trying to provide sustainable solutions and technologies and a better way of doing things.”
