We’re looking at the essence of Stella McCartney in her pre-fall 2026 collection: tailoring, dresses, sassy casuals, and all. “I just really wanted to explore what it is about me as an individual, and what it is about my brand that is special and that is positive and creative,” she explained on a Zoom call. McCartney reached an inflexion point this year, re-starting as an independent designer, having departed LVMH.

“I’ve spent so much time having to focus so deeply on the business side over all these years, I really wanted to be creative.” So this season she’s stripped everything back to what she wants from her own wardrobe. “I just went into all of my principles as a designer.” A quick sweep over the visuals gives an impression: here’s Boss Stella, Party Stella, and Farm Stella with—as always—a good sprinkling of Family Stella throughout. She points to the tailored suit and the white lace dress in looks 1 and 2 as standing for two of her design facets: “the masculine and feminine. I want both.”

Stella’s tailoring—which runs from drapier renderings through to English-spirited tweedy checked looks—has its perma-origins. “My parents are always, always on my wall when I start creating. Those ’70s rock and roll suits on Mick Jagger and my mum and dad. I just can’t avoid them!” she shrugs, smiling. “This season I have an amazing three-piece suit that is so reminiscent of my old ’90s collections—like when I worked at Savile Row—and this narrow leg, this more tapered jacket.”

More embedded family memories pop up as she speaks. Paul McCartney used to wear traditional “Burlington Arcade gentleman’s slippers, with an embroidered crest on the toe, but with, like cords on the farm.” That sparked the idea for her own SMC embroidered monogram, looking spiffily preppy on the breast pocket of a white blazer, paired with patched jeans, a look with a kind of Lauren Hutton in the ’80s breeze about it.

Stella’s big sister Heather also gets a salute. “Looking up to her and how I saw her dressing in the early ’80s, Heather was New Romantic-Punk.” That vibe plays through studded faux leather looks, and some eye-catching gathered-waist pencil skirts, white Maud Frizon-like pointy pumps and big-shouldered blouses with handkerchief-draped sleeves. Just the sort of young glam get-ups that the Top of the Pops audience used to jump around in circa 1982.

The Farm Stella, home-crafty, outdoorsy looks also originate in her upbringing, particularly in Linda McCartney’s love of horses and animals. “It’s the The Year of the Horse in 26,” Stella exclaims. “That’s my spirit animal, obviously! So I’m getting quite excited about what that represents: strength and freedom, apparently, which I would say is bang on for this brand, bang on.”

Thus, an image of galloping horses runs across a sweater, and her new, soft, capacious bag is named Appaloosa. As for the funny, hand-crafty llama-faces sweater? Well, they’re portraits of John, Paul, George, and Ringo, her family’s pets.

It takes a woman designer to veer between multiple moods and still stamp a collection with her own character. We haven’t so far mentioned the far-from-the-farm party dressing which has been so integral to Stella McCartney’s identity ever since she was young. Now she’s in her 50s, she completely knows her way around her repertoire of modern occasion dressing—everything from sophisticated drapery to outright avant-garde silhouettes. Call the latter Met Gala Stella—that’d be the up-swooping lace corset, which she swears she’s engineered to make soft and comfortable. “I’ve tried on every piece myself,” she attests. “Can’t wait to wear it.”