This story was updated on April 24, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. ET.
LONDON — Stella McCartney is saluting the planet with a new installation at her Old Bond Street store that highlights some of the innovative, sustainable materials she’s been testing and using in her collections over the past 24 years.
The Future of Fashion installation has already traveled the world, and has been set up in London for the first time to mark Earth Day on Tuesday.
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There is a timeline of McCartney’s research and development over the past decades and the resulting designs, including the vegan Falabella bag and Elyse platform shoes, which launched in 2009 and 2014, respectively.
It also showcases the summer 2025 collection, the most sustainable to date, made with 96 percent conscious and 100 percent cruelty-free materials, according to the brand.
The collection includes bags made from Hydefy fungi-based vegan leather; fluffy chubbies done in Peekaboo recycled and recyclable nylon yarn, and tops made from Keel Labs’ Kelsun seaweed-based yarn.
Other materials on display include lead-free crystals, plant-based sequins, forest-friendly viscose and raffia, which has been pruned in a way that preserves the health of the palm and the surrounding environment.
According to the brand, palm plants “play a crucial role in soil conservation and erosion control along riverbanks or in wet areas. These wetlands support diverse ecosystems and planting raffia palms contributes to biodiversity by providing stable, enriched habitats for vegetation and animal species.”
Stella McCartney unveiled The Future of Fashion at COP26 in Glasgow, and the installation has since traveled the world — to Dubai Design Week, the Salone del Mobile in Milan and COP28 in Dubai.
“By showcasing my sustainable solutions and lasting designs, I want to encourage young designers and businesspeople to be inspired – and pave the road for them by lobbying lawmakers globally to incentivize innovation instead of punishing it with taxations. That is the future of fashion, and our planet,” McCartney said.
“Material innovation is something I have always done, not because I had to, but because we need to if we are going to leave anything good for future generations. We self-police here at Stella, which is why we are not only cruelty-free but also PVC-free, animal glue-free, zero-deforestation and against all forms of human subjugation in our supply chain,” she added.
The installation also highlights fashion’s faults, and the brand’s green ambitions.
According to the brand, the industry is responsible for up to 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The company said that figure will no doubt get bigger as the industry continues to grow due to an increasing population and swelling consumption.
For its part, the brand has set a 2040 net-zero target that includes cutting emissions across its supply chain by 46.2 percent by 2030 “and developing projects that support partners, innovators and global communities in their climate-resilient journeys.”
The designer herself is supporting the development and scaling of next-generation, innovative materials and processes through the SOS Fund.
SOS is a $200 million sustainable investment fund that McCartney cofounded with Collaborative Fund, a venture capital firm that provides seed and early stage funding to consumer industry and climate technology companies.
McCartney said the SOS Fund “is empowering visionaries like Natural Fiber Welding, who have created a plant-based and circular alternative to leather. We are also supporting Keel Labs, who make the seaweed yarn in my summer 2025 collection, as well as Protein Evolution, who use AI and enzymes to turn plastic textile waste into infinitely recyclable polyester.”
As part of its Earth Day efforts, the brand has launched a pop-up at La Rinascente in Milan that will run until Monday.
The pop-up highlights the “Save What You Love” message from the summer 2025 campaign. As reported, the campaign is a call to protect dwindling avian life, and a warning that one day there may be a world where birds live only in fantasy.
The campaign was inspired by Jonathan Franzen, a birdwatcher and author of the essay collection “The End of the End of the Earth.”
At the pop-up, there is complimentary ice cream on offer as well as copies of the Stella Times, the third in a series of limited-edition newspapers that featured in the latest runway at Paris Fashion Week.