STELLA McCARTNEY | From Tailoring’s Contrasts to Rose and Amber

STELLA McCARTNEY POP product photograph with tailoring fabrics in a brand-inspired composition.
2026.11.01

I started designing because I craved ethically made things I couldn’t find

— Stella McCartney

Precise suits and the soft lines of fluid fabric sit together in Stella McCartney’s work. Her first fragrance, STELLA, brought a related contrast to perfume in 2003: a rose she had loved since childhood, paired with darker amber. Balancing a flower’s delicacy with a shadow beneath it carried a way of thinking from clothes into scent.

A second concern is how desirable things are made, and from which materials. Her lifelong vegetarianism, regard for animals and practical training in tailoring informed the choices behind her own house. Following that background makes the decisions about fragrance, packaging, use and the people in its campaigns more intelligible.

At a glance

  • Founder: Stella McCartney
  • Origins: Britain; raised in London and the English countryside
  • Fashion house established: 2001, in partnership with Gucci Group
  • First fragrance: STELLA, 2003; later projects included Stella In Two, L.I.L.Y. and POP
  • Official website: Stella McCartney

The founder and the making of the house

Her parents’ clothes and life in the countryside

Her father is musician Paul McCartney; her mother was photographer Linda McCartney. Childhood included both life in the British countryside and accompanying her parents on tour. Dressing up in Linda’s clothes and seeing her father’s tailored suits made clothing part of family life.

McCartney drew inspiration from her parents’ bespoke tailoring and Linda’s vintage dresses from the 1930s and 1940s. Linda, a photographer, vegetarian and animal-rights advocate, continues to influence her work.

Supporting ideas with the craft of tailoring

She interned with Christian Lacroix at fifteen and later worked at British Vogue. Finding that design rather than editorial work was her direction, she studied at Central Saint Martins. Alongside its encouragement of creative thinking, she sought the technical skills she felt she lacked at Edward Sexton’s Savile Row workshop.

Sexton already made clothes for Paul. When he learned from Paul that Stella was at art school, he recommended a workshop apprenticeship.

She graduated in 1995 and became Chloé’s creative director in 1997. The relationship with Sexton continued: contracted by Chloé, he worked in Paris and helped train Italian factories. Their collaboration supported the practical realisation of her tailoring ideas.

A house of her own, without leather

A choice about materials also shaped her move towards independence. Discussing a future role with Gucci Group’s Tom Ford, McCartney objected to using animal skins. Ford saw her reaching a different customer from the group’s other houses and proposed her own label.

I knew that she could and should have her own label.

— Tom Ford

In 2001, she established the house with Gucci Group, excluding leather and fur from the outset. She turned a wish for things she could not find into the work of making them. In her bags, she also insisted that material choices must meet the same design standards. Regard for animals sits alongside the work of making desirable objects.

What shapes the brand

STELLA: rose with the shadow of amber

YSL Beauté introduced STELLA in 2003. Rose, a favourite from childhood, and woody ambers formed its centre. At the launch, McCartney described combining a delicate flower with a darker, more sensual edge.

something pure and uncomplicated

— Stella McCartney

McCartney herself connected this contrast with her fashion design. She found fragrance overwhelming when it seemed to displace her identity; looking back on STELLA in 2021, she emphasised its clear pairing of rose and amber. Simplifying the idea mattered alongside choosing what to combine.

The original STELLA was an eau de parfum in a faceted, amethyst-like bottle designed by McCartney. A 2015 eau de toilette used pink polka dots. The shared name spans distinct concentrations and bottle versions.

Stella In Two and L.I.L.Y.: forms of use and personal memory

Stella In Two, launched in 2006, separated the original floral and amber poles into two products: Peony, a liquid eau de toilette, and Amber, a solid perfume. They could be worn separately or layered. McCartney wanted a lighter flower to reach another audience; making amber solid also made it portable for travel.

For L.I.L.Y., released in 2012, McCartney reunited with Jacques Cavallier, the perfumer who had worked on STELLA. Its name used the initials of Paul’s nickname for Linda, Linda, I love you. McCartney loved lily of the valley’s brief spring flowering in the shade. To modernise that delicate image, she wanted to include the unseen roots and earth.

Perfumery is built on the art of contrasts.

— Jacques Cavallier

She chose moss, then found a darker element in truffle during an autumn visit to Paris. Cavallier explained that truffle notes gave the lily of the valley more depth. A family memory informed the name, while their collaboration worked through what to place alongside the flower.

POP: a fragrance another generation could call its own

POP moved the central contrast to tuberose and sandalwood in 2016. McCartney wanted to introduce tuberose, a flower associated with an older generation, to younger wearers.

It’s about celebrating, not belittling, these women.

— Stella McCartney

Grimes, Lourdes Leon, Amandla Stenberg and Kenya Kinski-Jones appeared in the campaign. For young women finding their direction, McCartney wanted a fragrance they could recognise as their own. Casting people from different creative fields, rather than a conventional model ideal, expressed that intention and the support women offer one another.

The eau de parfum launched in Japan on 1 June 2016. Bluebell Japan’s release described the metallic-pink cap’s Falabella-inspired motif and the spray button built into its top. It also reported biomimicry technology intended to reduce consumption of flowers and wood, and FSC-certified paper cartons. The choices encompassed the fragrance’s impression, its production and the object held in the hand.

The STELLA name in skincare

Announced in 2022, STELLA by Stella McCartney was a skincare project developed with LVMH’s beauty division. It centred on a cleanser, serum and cream with refillable formats, a different product category from the 2003 perfume. The fragrances discussed here trace the house’s history through launch-era sources.

References