Stella McCartney

Greed and double standards

This is a piece I had published in Spiked shortly after Covid first struck.

The Covid-19 crisis has definitely shown which employers put their money where their mouth is. Interestingly, some of the most preachy are turning out to be grasping and miserly when it comes to putting their hands in their own bulging pockets. One example of this tightwad attitude is Stella McCartney.   Despite being worth a reputed £60 million a year,  having a turnover of £500 million a year, and being in possession of a billionaire father whose wealth exceeds his taste (in second wives, embarrassing dad thumbs up signs, and woeful plastic surgery), Stella is taking money from the government’s furlough scheme offering 80% of workers’ pay up to £2500 a month, and refusing to top it up from her own amply-stocked coffers.

A few months ago, Stella deigned to teach us green lessons by instructing us to not wash our clothes but to simply brush the dirt off them.

For decades, Stella has made a fortune charging hundreds of pounds for rather frumpy clothes which she claims are ‘environmentally friendly.’ And the daughter of Paul McCartney has not been averse to using her father’s fame to further her own career - even at her final year show at art college, she used his contacts to enable her to have supermodels sashaying down the catwalk.

But how green *are* Stella’s clothes? If you peruse her website, you will see that most of them are made of viscose, a material made by treating natural wood from trees such as beech, eucalyptus and pine, or plants such as bamboo, soy, or sugarcane, with harsh chemicals. These chemicals, which include carbon disulphide, are highly toxic. Dr Paul Blanc, Professor of Medicine at the University of California, who has written about the history of viscose, warned that “ Chronic exposure to carbon disulphide can cause serious health problems for workers, including Parkinson’s disease, premature heart attack and stroke.” Carbon disulphide can also cause birth defects, skin conditions, and cancer.

Dr Blanc also warned that the chemicals may be released into the environment, causing pollution to air and water. The listed effects of carbon disulphide poisoning have been seen not only in workers but in those who live near viscose factories.  To her credit, McCartney tries to prevent the latter from happening by using ‘closed loop’ factories, where toxins are captured, but accidents such as leaks may happen anywhere. There have been several disasters at viscose factories worldwide, albeit mostly non closed loop ones in Asia, which have led to many people being poisoned.

Environmental group Canopy, which works to raise awareness of deforestation, estimates that more than 150 million trees are chopped every year to be turned into viscose and related fabrics, and that if placed end to end, those trees would circle the earth seven times. In addition, the process wastes about 70% of the tree. They state that less than 20% of the world’s forests remain intact. Although McCartney uses trees from forests which are not currently in danger of disappearing, it is still tragic to think of trees being chopped down in order to make processed clothes. And of course, even areas where deforestation is not a problem at the moment run the risk of becoming barren if intensive tree cutting continues. For someone who boasts of green credentials to be behind the pulping of trees and plants, which, when alive, use carbon dioxide in photosynthesis and create oxygen, seems paradoxical. Increasing carbon dioxide - one of the main alleged culprits causing climate change - and reducing oxygen production - oxygen being vital for respiration in humans and other mammals - are not the only effects of cutting down trees: when trees are chopped, animals and plants that rely on them lose their cover or sustenance and die.

So overall, viscose has been given very low (D and E ) scores for sustainability in the Made-By Environmental Benchmark for fibres. Although in 2014 McCartney teamed up with Canopy, the result was simply that McCartney’s raw materials would be sourced from ‘sustainably managed and certified’ forests in Sweden. This is a start, but adds thousands of air miles to the process since McCartney’s site states that the raw material is obtained in Sweden, the viscose factory is in Germany, and the clothes are then made in Italy. Then a few hundred fume-producing, oil-burning miles back to the shops in the UK. The petrol involved would be enough to fly Emma Thompson from LA to London to lecture us on the environment hundreds of times over, or for us plebs to wash our clothes a few million times.

Admittedly, the processes used in McCartney’s clothes do not involve some of the heinous crimes common in other parts of the fashion industry, like child workers or sweat shops. But why doesn’t she just use more sustainable fabrics, like organic cotton, non-white, organic linen (white linen involves bleaching), and wool? These natural fabrics do not involve toxic chemical processing, and  have the advantage of not making you perspire, so they are less likely to become stinky, which might make McCartney’s No Washing edict more practical. They may be more expensive than viscose, but since McCartney charges hefty prices for her clothes, she’ll still turn in a very decent profit. Furthermore, woollen clothes can be made in the UK, and linen ones in Ireland, reducing the carbon footprint.

Stella McCartney has also cluelessly boasted that her shop in London is decorated with stones, moss, and herbs from her father’s farm in Campbeltown, Scotland. The environmental pollution created by lorries transporting these will be equivalent to hundreds of quick wash cycles at low temperatures. But obviously, McCartney thinks it’s more important for her wealthy clientele to see pebbles that have caused more pollution than the average British family’s annual holiday than for the proles to wear clean clothes. It’s very easy for millionaires to recommend not washing clothes - David Beckham once famously said that he threw underpants out after one use. But to ordinary people, wearing clean clothes is a matter of dignity and self respect, not to mention vital for successful social interaction.

As so often, the message from the sanctimonious and hypocritical celebrities seems to be ‘do as I say, not as I do.’ Just as we plebs - previously the  great unwashed -  can wash our clothes and bodies cheaply and effectively, and will continue to do so, it seems that at a time when most people are eroding their savings for the good of the nation, Stella is not averse to grabbing from the public purse.