‘It’s a Proud Moment’: Stella McCartney on Returning to Collaborate With H&M, 20 Years Later

Reported by Vogue.

Twenty years ago, Stella McCartney took a gamble that the fashion industry wasn't quite ready for. In 2005, she became only the second designer — after Karl Lagerfeld the year prior — to do a high-street collaboration, partnering with H&M just four years after launching her own label. "It was a risk," she tells Vogue, sitting in a London riverside space in her signature gray tailoring, oat flat white in hand. "But I'm a risk-taker every day in my job." The gamble delivered: The Guardian called it "McCartney mania," The Independent a "Stella stampede," and British Vogue a "shopping riot" — all of it two years before Kate Moss brought Oxford Circus to a standstill for Topshop. "It was on the cover of the Financial Times," McCartney recalls, laughing. "People properly fighting, pulling pieces out of each other's hands."

Now she's back. On May 7, McCartney drops a second H&M collection — and this one reads like a career highlight reel. There's an oversized trench in Regenerative Organic Certified cotton, a cropped bomber in faux snakeskin finished with a coating of recycled frying oil, and crystal-studded cut-out jeans (originally walked by Bella Hadid in spring 2023) now rendered with 80% recycled-glass crystals at $169. Her iconic Falabella bag gets an accessible reboot — recycled-metal chain detailing, $99–$219 — and the legendary "Rock Royalty" T-shirt, born from a three-pack of Hanes tanks customized in Little Italy for the 1999 Met Gala alongside Liv Tyler, makes another well-earned comeback. "It shows the spirit of the brand, the humor," McCartney says. "There's a very serious subject matter underneath everything I do — you have to have a lightness as well."

The Real Agenda Underneath the Cool Clothes

The collection's breadth is deliberate. McCartney is explicit: "I'm not an elitist designer." The price point frustrates her — most people who love her work can't access it — and this collaboration is her workaround. Every piece carries detailed material labeling: organic cotton, circular viscose, wool from farms with verified animal welfare standards, recycled feedstock textiles. H&M's creative advisor Ann-Sofie Johansson notes that third-party certifications back up the claims. It's a pointed move at a moment when many brands are quietly shelving their sustainability commitments. H&M is simultaneously launching an Insights Board with McCartney and targeting 100% recycled or sustainably sourced materials by 2030. "We have some tough goals," says Johansson, "but we're continuing with them in a very transparent way."

McCartney is clear-eyed about the contradictions. "Yes, this is fast fashion: it's not perfect. Often, it's shit — but we can make it less shit," she says. "We can make positive progress." The campaign, shot by Sam Rock, features Angelina Kendall, Adwoa Aboah, and Renée Rapp — "mates of mine," McCartney says, "women who have more to bring than just how they look." The pieces, meanwhile, are legitimately covetable: the kind of clothes that sit in wardrobes for decades, not seasons. Multiple Vogue editors still own items from the 2005 drop.

The real power move isn't the collection itself — it's the proof of concept: that sustainable fashion can be desirable, accessible, and built to last.

Read the original at Vogue.