Is it In Vogue Yet?

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It soon will be, if trend-setting fashion designer Stella McCartney gets her way.

What are we talking about here?

Sustainability – not a word that springs automatically to mind in the fashion context.

Fashion has had a fairly clear split personality: ‘front-row’ status reserved for the super-rich and stick-thin; the rest of us finding joy in knock-off bargains that’ll cost us less than a round of drinks on our night out. But the times they are a-changing.

McCartney – who long ago shucked off her status as the daughter of The Beatles’ Sir Paul and his wife, animal rights activist Linda, to flourish in her own right – goes against the tide of ‘fast fashion’ with this dreamy, thought-provoking ad for her new platform, Stella’s World of Sustainability.

Juxtaposing hard edges, vivid colours and startling paints with naked skin glimpsed amid gentle country surroundings, it encourages us to understand fashion through a softer prism, under the slogan, ‘To Nurture, To Nature’.

This is the designer who sent her models stalking across a Scottish landfill for her Winter 2017 collection, and is indignant that only 1% of clothes are recycled: “What are we doing?” she exclaims.

She’s not the only one: both she and fellow Brit Vivienne Westwood, a keen environmental activist, have said it is better for someone to buy one pricey item from their collection than to scoop up 20 cheap ones and discard them almost with no use.

McCartney goes against the tide of ‘fast fashion’ with this dreamy, thought-provoking ad for her new platform, Stella’s World of Sustainability.

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Protest has always been present in an industry that blends beauty and exploitation.

Creations by both McCartney and Westwood feature in a new exhibition, ‘Fashioned From Nature’, at London’s V&A Museum, which explores the relationship between fashion and the natural environment.

Meanwhile, can this kind of ad inspire us all to see our threads a different way and help build a more sustainable future? Or do we all still love a bargain too much and wouldn’t be seen dead twice in the same outfit?

To have your say on this and other ads, please visit the ADDS site.

Tree Elven is a creative who thinks big, values simplicity, and just loves life. She’s the Founder of ADDS, an independent voting platform – it’s like TripAdvisor for advertising.