Stella McCartney’s greatest hits are now at H&M prices

You know the tank. The one that looks like it’s been hacked together in a downtown apartment at 2 am—a white vest, studded, laced, and scrawled with “Rock Royalty”. Stella McCartney first made it in 1999 for herself and Liv Tyler to wear to the Met Gala (theme: Rock Style, obviously). The origin story is as scrappy as the top: a trip to a shop called Filth Mart in Little Italy, a three-pack of Fruit of The Loom vests, and a stud gun.

“But what I love, my proudest moment, is we were the Halloween costumes that year. I’m not trying to put [H&M] out of any sales or anything, but you guys can do this at home. Come on. Seriously. Don’t let me down,” McCartney laughs now. Though, conveniently, if your fingers are fast enough, you won’t have to.

Because now, the legendary tank top is back, this time as part of her collaboration with H&M, alongside a tightly edited run of “Stella’s superstars”. Think lace-trimmed camisoles lifted from McCartney’s Chloé days, slinky knits with an aluminium chain detail that nods to the Falabella bag, and party pieces that glitter with recycled crystals. There are easy, elevated everyday pieces, like a sharply cut grey suit and draped dresses, and then, just to keep things from getting too polite, a unicorn sweatshirt, a crystal bralette, and jeans with crystal-outlined star cutouts at the hip. “I really wanted to make it quite gender-fluid, because I take men’s suits all the time. Anyone can wear it. I definitely wanted to have a solution-driven wardrobe,” McCartney says of her new collaboration with the brand.

If it feels like a greatest-hits album, that’s because it is. But it’s also a sequel. This isn’t the first time the British designer is designing for the Swedish giant. Her first collaboration with H&M was launched in the thick of the noughties, in November 2005, hot on the heels of H&M’s first-ever designer collaboration with Karl Lagerfeld. The launch party had a musical chairs segment with the models, Hilary Duff attended in a tasselled halterneck dress, and Gwyneth Paltrow was papped walking out with a bag full of H&M by Stella McCartney loot. The 40-piece-strong collection—full of cami dresses (with sashes at the waist!), silk jumpsuits, wrap blouses and dresses, and tailored jackets—sold out within minutes despite being available in 400 stores.

But what set the collection apart wasn’t just fabulous designs or the celebrity frenzy—it was McCartney’s insistence on doing things differently. “Back then, I stipulated a very clear list of requirements around sustainability, and it was like, everything has to be this or I’m not going to do it,” she recalls during the press preview of her new H&M collection. “And they managed, to their credit, to deliver on it and it was a huge success.”

What convinced her to come back two decades later, though, wasn’t commercial success or nostalgia but that those ideas didn’t just sit in a capsule collection and disappear. “H&M didn’t just leave it there, which I think a lot of other people could have done. We introduced these ways of thinking from Stella, and they actually kept going,” she says.

Two decades later, they’re doing it again, this time with the benefit of hindsight, better supply chains, and an industry that talks a lot more about sustainability but, as both parties admit, not always convincingly. Over the last few years, the conversation around sustainability in the fashion industry has become quieter. It’s something Ann-Sofie Johansson, H&M’s creative advisor and head of design, is also keen to emphasise. “Sustainability has fallen off the agenda a little bit now. Nobody seems to talk about it any longer, including H&M. There’s a little bit of fear about how to talk about it, and we just thought it was great to team up again and actually put it back on the agenda and continue to keep that conversation going,” says Johansson. “One of the reasons we collaborated again is to show what progress we have made during these 20 years. Stella inspired us to be better. We started with organic cotton and today all the cotton we use at H&M is actually organic, recycled or better sourced,” she adds.

For McCartney, who is aware her designs get copied by the high street, the real value of a partnership like this is scale. “My [Falabella] top has a recycled aluminum chain, and that gets copied with a completely virgin aluminium chain. Or a bag will get copied and it will be animal leather,” she explains. “Part of me wanted to do these icons to just make them available to more people in a sustainable way.”

If you can swap in recycled crystals, better fibres, new suppliers—and do it at H&M volumes—that’s when it starts to matter. “In order to make change, I believe, you have to infiltrate from within. You have to swap out bad business for good business,” McCartney adds. It’s less about perfection than substitution: replacing one material, one supplier, one system at a time, at a scale big enough to ripple outward. Fast fashion may not be good for the planet, but McCartney makes it feel, if not exactly virtuous, then at least conscious.

Apart from the clothes, the collection also includes bags and shoes made of vegan leather. “We don’t kill animals. There’s no dead cows, no dead animal bones, none of those toxic chemicals that they use to tan the leather... Because it’s sustainable, people are like, it’s plastic or PVC. But it’s not. It’s all natural materials that then have different coatings,” McCartney emphasises.

When asked to pick a favourite piece from the collection, McCartney responds, “I put that in the contract. I’ve got one of everything, so I’m not going to have to choose. I’m a greedy bastard,” she says matter-of-factly. Despite this, she does plan on lining up with everyone else on the day of the launch. “I’m going to queue up…put on a disguise. I’ll make the BBC news; [they’ll be] like, oh Stella, she was so humble, she queued up.”

The collection lands in stores and online globally on May 7, and depending on where you are, you might even get lucky and spot McCartney in the queue, likely with a beard, an earpiece, a hip flask, and a red bob wig.