Stella McCartney marketing an eco-friendly fragrance

By Samantha Critchell
Associated Press

Stella McCartney, daughter of an ex-Beatle, has her own line with Gucci. Advertiser library photo • Aug. 31, 2003

Now that she's launching her own signature fragrance, she has made a few additions to her principle list. Stella, developed with YSL Beaute, is made from organic active ingredients, doesn't use genetically modified crop raw materials, and the perfume and accompanying body products were not tested on animals.

McCartney says she's not sure if these rules have helped or hindered her career, but they've helped make her what she is today.

"What I try to do is always in the best interest of my client. If they know what I stand for, I wouldn't want to cheat them by not following through," says McCartney, who was recently in New York to promote the fragrance.

Whenever possible, she says, she gets written commitments from her business associates pledging that they are also following her ethical guidelines.

But since it's her name sewn into the label of that cashmere coat and etched into the perfume bottle, McCartney says her work is very personal.

"What really inspires me is me. ... I try to bring out the friction of my sexy feminine side and the masculine powerful side. It's how I try to act and then portray in my work," she says. At age 31, she has her own designer label within the prestigious Gucci Group.

Rather than trading on her famous name — McCartney as in daughter of Paul — and presumably a family fortune to launch a trendy, quick-sell teen line when she felt a calling to fashion, McCartney decided to learn the craft of master tailoring on Saville Row in London while also taking design classes at Central Saint Martins College in the early 1990s.

She moved on to the house of Chloe in 1997, where she earned respect in the fashion world for her feminine clothes. She won the Designer of the Year trophy at the 2000 VH1 Vogue Fashion Awards and her dad surprised her on stage to hand her the award.

When she struck the Gucci deal in 2001 to do her own name-brand collection, she did it on the condition that she'd have complete creative control. "I don't just want to be the face of a megabrand," she says.

A fragrance was sure to follow several seasons of successful ready-to-wear clothes and glitzy, star-studded store openings. "Part of me didn't want to give up my name (for the fragrance); it's more personal since it's just 'Stella,' " she says, "but it's the honest thing to do."

She adds: "And Stella is a nice name for a perfume."