It would be easy to dismiss the efforts of a retail giant like H&M—whose business model, some would argue, is fundamentally incompatible with sustainable principles—to do all this. But at a moment when a vast number of brands have rolled back their sustainability efforts (many for political reasons), it’s cheering to see a retailer double down on those efforts: Alongside the collaboration, H&M is launching an Insights Board with McCartney to further that conversation, and by 2030, its target is to be using 100% recycled or sustainably sourced materials. “We have some tough goals, but we’re continuing with our goals in a very transparent way, and we’re trying to make it as big as possible,” says Johansson of applying the lessons learned through their partnership with McCartney to the brand’s projects more widely. “Some of the things are harder to scale, but we can apply it, of course, to more of our collections. That is usually how it works for us: We do it for a smaller, more limited [offering], and then we can scale it up.”
As for how McCartney sees it: “The reason for me to do it is to go, okay, let’s start a conversation,” she says. “Yes, this is fast fashion: it’s not perfect. Often, it’s shit, but we can make it less shit—sorry for my language. We can make positive progress. It can be better. That makes me so excited.”
Photo: Sam Rock / Courtesy of H&M
The collection comes accompanied by a campaign shot by Sam Rock, featuring Angelina Kendall, Adwoa Aboah, and Renée Rapp alternately rolling in a field of grass and posing against the stark white backdrop of a photographic studio. (“They’re all mates of mine,” McCartney says of the casting. “And they’re women who have more to bring to the table than just how they look—they have amazing minds, too.”) It’s a reminder that the collection is just very cool—I can already picture the pieces that friends and colleagues will be snapping up. In the process of writing this story, multiple Vogue editors recounted to me the stories of the beloved H&M x Stella pieces they picked up back in the 2000s, and which still sit in their wardrobes today, in particular the jeans with zipper pockets: “I used to wear them with an elongated but not oversized V-neck sweater from same collab, with a little tie-dyed cami underneath and mid-heel pumps,” Nicole Phelps, Vogue Runway’s global director tells me. “I felt very chic.” Even Johansson arrives to meet me in a beaded silk jacket she bought while working as a womenswear designer for H&M back in the 2000s; it still looks as relevant as the day it first hit the shop floor. I somewhat inelegantly describe this strategy to McCartney—of surreptitiously bundling these sustainability credentials into highly covetable clothes—as similar to how you might put a pill in peanut butter to get your dog to eat its medication. She reacts to this so enthusiastically that she nearly knocks over her coffee. “I love that! That’s a T-shirt right there. The pill in the peanut butter. When that T-shirt comes out, you’re going to be like, ‘How dare she?’”
