By Lotus Ladegaard

It has been 15 years since Stella McCartney launched her first collection under her own name at Paris Fashion Week. After her tenure at Chloe, she partnered with Kering (formerly the Gucci Group) and built a successful brand including women’s ready-to-wear, accessories, lingerie, eyewear, fragrance and children. Stella McCartney is committed to sustainability and aims at being a responsible, honest and modern company. She is also well known for not using any leather or fur.

Stella McCartney describes her signature style as sharp tailoring, natural confidence and sexy femininity, but her SS17 collection failed to live up to those standards. Her colour palette was everywhere, in fact, her collection lacked cohesiveness and felt very much like a reminiscence of the 80’s with large puffed sleeves, shoulder paddings and very androgynous silhouettes. Many of the looks distorted the female figure or exaggerated areas that most women would prefer to slim down. The earthy coloured looks felt very mature and some of the individual pieces like the jackets were beautifully made and could easily be mixed with other business or formal attire, while the printed looks felt very young in comparison. It was almost as if she gave us a collection with garments for a mother and her young teenage daughter. Some of the individual pieces, I am sure, will still be very popular among her loyal following, but when it comes to cohesive expression of an idea this is not her best work. 

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Lotus Ladegaard is a Copenhagen based writer and a house model.