There's nothing better than having the pleasure of meeting one of your personal favourite fashion designers, let alone one of the most hard working and inspirational women in the industry. Yesterday, I had that very pleasure when I was invited on an intimate tour of Stella McCartney's first standalone Adidas store hosted by the women herself.
I will be getting around to the store and its array of fashion forward sports gear, but first I have to mention just how friendly, approachable and utterly genuine Stella McCartney is. I remember hearing her speak at the British Vogue Festival earlier this year and loved her charisma on stage then, so you can imagine my excitement when I had the opportunity to actually engage with her as she talked us through her key looks of the season, why she loves infusing her extensive knowledge of fashion with technology led sportswear and of course her brand new environmentally friendly store.
Stella McCartney for Adidas has been going for over eight years and started off through a friendship with someone at Adidas. She had just left Chloé and was about to embark on her first collection. She contacted Adidas to collaborate on a sneaker for her runway show and since then, season after season she has been creating performance collections that, as she puts it, "inspires you to work out, fashion is there to inspire people and if you combine that with sport it takes it to a whole new level".
The AW12 collection at Stella McCartney for Adidas is all about creating a look that you feel comfortable in when working out, not just comfortably physically but, if you were to bump into someone you know on your way back from a jog or being at the gym, comfortable enough to know you look good that you don't dip your head down and disappear. "You should be able to wear your favourite t-shirt for working out, but why can't that favourite t-shirt be the one with the climate cool technology?" explains Stella.
Stella McCartney is one of the only fashion houses in the world to have a successful sports performance range, so it only seemed natural that Stella McCartney Adidas was to be responsible for creating the Team GB kits for the Olympics 2012.
After learning that on so many occasions athletes from different categories were all dealt with by separate creatives, it began to make a lot of sense why it was so important to have a creative director over all; someone who could take each athlete from each category and uniform their kits. "It's the first year a fashion designer has ever worked on an Olympic kit as well as the first time a team's kit has been worked on so comprehensively and so detailed. A lot of the time the women just wore what the men wore and I was outraged by that, I made a point to change it." - Stella McCartney.
Stella McCartney's Adidas store is adjacent to the Stella McCartney store on Fulham Road in South Kensington.