Stella McCartney

Stella McCartney launches collection inspired by Jonathan Safran Foer

Designer says author’s book We Are the Weather struck a chord with its environmental message

From the hats of Hunter S Thompson to the jewellery of Edith Sitwell, fashion has long been inspired by authors’ styles, but Stella McCartney has taken a different tack and designed a capsule collection inspired by the words of the bestselling author Jonathan Safran Foer.

The book in question is Safran Foer’s We Are the Weather. Published last year, it proselytises eating less meat, specifically aiming to eat no animal products before dinner, as a way to save the planet, given that animal agriculture produces more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire transportation sector.

Safran Foer, whose previous titles include Eating Animals, which delved into the perils of factory farming, and McCartney, a lifelong vegetarian and pioneer of sustainable fashion, were already friends.

“We are on the same wavelength,” explains McCartney.

When she read a draft copy of the book it struck a chord. “I could see knitwear, sun and the clouds. There was just so much for me to pull out of the book visually and artistically,” she says.

It inspired her to create a men’s and women’s ready-to-wear collection that sees the title of Safran Foer’s book emblazoned on T-shirts and jumpers. Other phrases from the book, such as “we are entirely free to live differently”, are embroidered on to suits and shirts. One jumper reads, simply: “SOS”. Garments have been made from sustainable fabrics such as organic cotton, organic linen and regenerated cashmere, which comes from pre-consumer textile waste.

“I don’t think collaboration is quite the right word for it,” says Safran Foer of the project. “I wrote something that I cared about a lot and Stella found ways to include me in her process.”

He admires the designer’s approach, which is, he says, to make “people feel empowered, that it’s possible to create change. That we don’t need to reverse our identities tomorrow or become martyrs. We just need to really think about the cause and effect chain that we enter into whenever we make a choice as a consumer.”

The McCartney collection comes at a time when the fashion industry is under increasing scrutiny for its detrimental impact on the planet. Last year was seen as a year of reckoning for an industry that, according to Greenpeace, emits 1.2bn tonnes of CO2 each year.

A raft of recent garments with a stated aim of raising awareness about climate chaos, or raising money to help combat its impacts, have been coined “moral merch” and criticised on the grounds of cynicism. The most recent high-profile example was the work of luxury label Balenciaga, who designed hoodies with a koala on them, proceeds from which are going to relief efforts in Australia.

• The We Are the Weather capsule, part of the designer’s Force for Nature spring/summer 2020 collection, launches in stores on 3 February.