Stella McCartney Quotations

Everyone can do simple things to make a difference, and every little bit really does count.

My biggest surprises in my everyday job have to do with the challenges of trying to be slightly more responsible as a brand.

I am a fashion designer. I'm not an environmentalist. When I get up in the morning, number one I'm a mother and a wife, and number two I design clothes. So the main thing I need to do is create, hopefully, exquisitely beautiful, desirable objects for my customer.

You feel like everyone hates you if you've got a good life, now I feel maybe it's allowed because I've had my share of sadness.

If you try to create something people enjoy, and it happens to be made in a responsible way, then that's when you can really strike an incredible balance.

I personally love sportswear, and love using it in high fashion.

Depending on the season, between 20 and 30 percent of my collections contain some sort of eco or sustainable element, whether it's a beautiful organic fabric or a natural dye. And obviously I don't use animal skins or fur of any kind.

I can honestly say this industry hasn't made me neurotic about my looks, except maybe my weight. I hope my clothes kind of reflect that. They're meant to make you feel good.

The beliefs I was raised with - to respect animals and to be aware of nature, to understand that we share this planet with other creatures - have had a huge impact on me.

I think the moment that I'm very proud of is building a business without using animals. And, hopefully, changing people's perception of how you can do luxury fashion.

I was brought up to understand that we are all here on planet earth together.

I didn't want to be thirtysomething and not know what I was going to do. I was quite afraid of that, there were quite a lot of aimless kids around, in that 'other' side of my life, who didn't really know what to do because they always had a bank balance to fall back on and they were quite lost.

People think I'm strong, but actually I wanted to crawl away. I thought, I'm going to live in the country with my horse and I'll get a nine-to-five; I don't need this.

For me, singing is the most natural thing in the world. I've grown up with it and I know I've got that gift.

There's no excuse for fur in this day and age.

I don't know, maybe I'm overly paranoid that they're going to be spoiled, but I want to keep them going as kids for as long as I can. I want to keep them innocent and free.

I literally have meetings at eight o'clock in the morning, and I finish at nine o'clock at night. It sounds pathetic, but I don't even have time to go shopping.

More than anything I want to be fit so I don't get out of breath when I play football with the kids.

I think deep down I'm spiritual, but there's nothing I practice.

It's immoral that people make money out of writing crap, but I try not to obsess about it. I don't want to spend my life being angry.

At times I make music, but in private.

I love that you can have the language between the two worlds of technology and fashion, because I don't think that many designers get to do that.

I ride my bike, I work out, I do a bit of, er, dancey things.

When you find the person that you settle down with, I guess you mellow. They are taming you, aren't they? Or you're taming them.

The only positive thing you can really gain through losing someone is learning, and teaching other people, ... So I hope to teach other people, and I hope to learn.

Losing my mum. That was a punch-me moment.

She would have loved some of the things I've done recently. She would have loved all my veggie shoes and she would have dug the Adidas thing. She'd have loved the perfume. It's a bummer. At the weekend I really wanted to call her, talk crap down the phone. I didn't have anything to say, just sort of babble. She was the classiest woman I know. And class? You can't buy class, you know?

I have never felt like this before. It's just fantastic, an absolute dream.

I found that when you have a baby, they are so pure and untouched that a car goes past and you look at all the pollution and you really want to protect them.

For years, the six of us lived in a two-bedroom house.

I was in this stadium with 200,000 people looking at my mum and dad. That was mind-bending.

You have to be hopeful that people will be more educated in how they buy things, and hopefully more luxury brands will start to think that way on a longer-term basis.

This one off collection is a 'best of' Stella McCartney. So many people come up to me and say 'I love your designs but could never afford them'. This collaboration is a great way to speak to a wider audience and let them get to know me and my designs better

I've always felt there was something wrong about making high-priced clothes - and I am really proud of the quality.

The one thing I have going for me is that I'm exactly the age bracket of the person who buys my clothes,

That's kind of my strongest thing in the tailoring,

It's not like evening wear, ... It's just kind of 'easy wear.' It's more like take one incredibly stunning thing and put it with a pair of jeans. I just think personally that's what I would do.

It's one of my biggest internal struggles - the whole schooling system in London and the fact that my kids are going to a posh school. It freaks me out.

I'm incredibly sad that my mother's not here to see my kids and that my kids don't get to know her. And she didn't meet my husband. That's one of the hardest things. I don't even know how to put that into words.

I'm not really sure why I'm in this business at the moment,

I hope that each season, we get tighter and tighter and we get a little more refined and the fabrics get richer. And I hope it gets better and better.

The direction is just really wearable, cool clothes.

Sometimes I wish I were less sensible.

I confess to being a frustrated musician.

I wanted to feel good about the way I looked. I didn't understand why style had to be sacrificed for sports technology. I found when going to the gym women were wearing their own tees, without the technology. I started to think, does it make you run faster if you wear that terrible color or sweat less if you wear that horrible fabric? And I challenged it, and the answers were not there to why we were being given poor design work. It was something I wanted to bring to women's wardrobes.

For me, women's ski wear has always been black and, again, not as feminine or sexy as I think it could look while still having the technology there.

Running is a huge category for us. To be able to run to work and have lightweight, breathable, windproof materials you can chuck in your bag that work on technical level but also on a lifestyle level are really important to me. I work out - and I think most people do - and I want to encourage women and inspire them in a way that fits in with their lifestyle.

I run a lot. If I don't have time to go to the gym or don't have time to work out properly, I will go for a quick run. I think running is a great way to stay fit, and I really concentrate on fitting into a realistic urban lifestyle.

The main challenge is technology and that's something I really push and work closely with Adidas on. They're real leaders in sports performance; always trying to push that further and further and get the best technology they can. That takes time and has rigorous testing, it's very laborious, but it's also very rewarding. You get to work with fantastic athletes, and that's a fantastic thing that has nothing to do with my day job in ready-to-wear.

Most male painters have historically admired the female form. It's got a lot going for it.

I think it took me a little while to be true to myself as a designer, and in some ways I'm still trying to do that. I have to choose things that come naturally to me. Whenever I challenge something too much or try too hard, it never quite works out.

Whether you eat meat of not, you can be part of this decision to limit the meat industry destroying our planet's resources.

We always had our own vegetables growing up and now I'm doing it with my kids at our house in the country.

It's not realistic to live in the country at this stage. I've got a business in London. I beat myself up about it all the time.

I used to get embarrassed about the fact I liked fashion. I still get a bit cringy.

I don't plan massively in advance.

I think it's very wrong to have the mass murder, every single day, of millions of animals.

The really great thing about my shoe store is that there's not one dead animal in it.

My mum taught me to have a soul.

I feel like a different person since my mum passed away, like I'm driving a ship with my husband alongside me and we're leading these four children into unknown waters.

You want to be confident when you work out because it takes a lot to make you work out. So many women really enjoy it, but it's a hard thing and you have to make yourself do it most of the time. I think you want to feel that you look good to make you want to work out a little bit more.

I get a real kick out of it, seeing people wear my designs.

I'd rather people turn up than not. And of course I'd rather have people be enthusiastic.

I don't use specific brands really. It's just that for my skin, I need as high an SPF factor as I can get my hands on. That's the only rule.

At the end of the day I separate things; my life is my life and my work is my work.

Strength on its own in a woman is quite abrasive and not terribly attractive all the time,

I think my mum was really very ahead of her time. She wore very little makeup. She really explored the way that she wore clothes in a very honest way. She wore a lot of vintage stuff and mixed it with bespoke men's tailoring and things like that. That was a huge influence on me, seeing a woman in the spotlight carry herself in that kind of way. But mostly, for me, it was just that she was an incredibly honest and sort of natural person.

Someone from Manolo Blahnik went into my shop and said: 'These shoes are not vegetarian.' That's the highest compliment, because you just can't tell that they are, and they are. My mum taught me to have a soul.

If people stop liking my clothes, I'll make a record.

I loved all those Doris Day visuals of her being a tomboy and then changing into this gorgeous girl in a ballgown.

I was first drawn to active wear because I enjoy working out, and it's very important in this day in age. I really felt women were getting the tail end of the design in active wear; not getting the technology or design we deserved. It was reserved for men. We were getting the leftover work from the sports design houses.

People work better when they are afforded to be themselves

I'm not offended or embarrassed by the fact that I design clothes for women to wear. So when I meet women who love my clothes, it's a really good, straightforward thing. It makes me feel like I'm doing my job right.

Success financially is a measure of creative success, it is the same in all arts.

The consumption of animals - whether you're wearing them or eating them - is extraordinarily damaging to the planet. There are over a billion animals killed a year for food, half of which don't even get eaten. And there's over 50 million animals killed just for fashion.

A little black dress is something to rely on. To fill you with confidence and ease. To have an attitude that is pure and effortless, yet sexy and classy.

The main thing I need to do is create, hopefully, exquisitely beautiful, desirable objects for my customer

I never wanted to make it too easy for people to sum me up.

It's incredibly important that if you have the dream of having your own house, you don't pretend to be something you're not. Ultimately, it's unsustainable and people will see through. You have to work; you can't expect your dreams to be handed to you on a plate.

When you think of fashion photography, it's a dream. It's like we all want to be those women. We want to wear those dresses.

Laugh my friend, for laughter ignites a fire within the pit of your belly and awakens your being.

We try to make earth-friendly decisions whenever we can, as it's part of our brand DNA.

It's not about what it looks like in the studio or on the runway. It's what it looks like on a real person that matters.

There's nothing fashionable about a dead animal that has been cruelly killed just because some people think it looks cool to wear.

I think personal style starts from within because it´s a philosophy and an attitude. If you´re honest and true to yourself, you will have the best sense of personal style.

Now, get out there and kick ass!

As a designer, I like to work with fabrics that don't bleed; that's why I avoid all animal skins.

Being effortless is the coolest thing in the world

I´m a real believer that just doing a little something is a lot better than doing a lot of nothing.

The really great thing about my shop is that there's not one dead animal in it. ... Manolo's got a load of fabric shoes as well! We use plastic, fabric, rubber- anything but leather. I almost feel like I've been put here to show everyone that it's unnecessary.