So what's really going on at Stella McCartney?

A £25m loss, the closure of the Bond Street flagship — all is not well at the designer's trailblazing label. But can she turn things around?

- BY JOE BROMLEY

You wouldn't have thought there was a problem on the first Monday in May. Stella McCartney — trailblazing sustainable fashion designer, daughter of Sir Paul and Linda, well-known fun time — was slapping Madonna's bum on the Met Gala steps, which she was attending with her guest Mary J Blige.

Both were visions in white outfits from McCartney's eponymous label, founded in 2001. The designer, 53, wore a draped, forest-friendly viscose jersey gown and the singer was in a sharp cut, repurposed wool tailored coat — a specialism at the label thanks to McCartney’s training at tailor Tommy Nutter on Savile Row, her first job after leaving Central Saint Martins in 1995.

That year, after her parents sat on the front row for her graduate show, with looks modelled by friends Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell — securing inevitable front page coverage — McCartney's ascent to the upper echelons of British fashion had already been set in motion.

Three decades later, as she boogied alongside A-list guests Anne Hathaway, Chris Rock, James Corden and Adrien Brody at her Met after-party, hosted with beauty mogul Charlotte Tilbury, everything appeared just as rosy. Back at Stella HQ, in west London's Olaf Street, however, her team were dealing with a crisis.

The latest accounts filed by the company, in March this year, showed a pre-tax loss of £25 million in 2023 — up from £10million the previous year. And on May 4, news emerged that the designer was set to close her beloved Old Bond Street flagship store, nine years before the lease expires.