“Waste is a Design Flaw”

Sustainability Is About Quality Over Quantity
FROM: Stella McCartney and Gabriela Hearst Preach Sustainability at Vogue Global Conversations By Steff Yotka April 14, 2020
    “At the end of the day, all the good values that we put in our product will not be enough to have people buy your product,” Hearst said bluntly. “They have to buy it because it’s a great product, because it’s well-designed.… No one is going to buy your product for your good intentions.” She continued, explaining that growing up on a ranch in Uruguay taught her quality and sustainability are inextricably linked. “You learn about sustainability from a very utilitarian perspective: You have to build products that last. We always lived and consumed with very few things, but they were made well so they could withstand the force of nature.We learned to grow [our business] with quality over quantity,” she said, noting that she opted not to wholesale her popular bags, an opportunity that could have doubled the size of her business, because it would mean doubling the natural resources consumed. “We’ve been very mindful about strategically growing and not overexposing and over distributing.”
    “We can still have incredible, desirable, fashionable, well-made timeless pieces as Gabriela says, but now is a time to use efficiently and with respect and to go back into normality in a new way,” McCartney added. “We all know how we were practicing things previously; we can do better. I think now is the time to ask those questions and hopefully actually action it when we get back.”
Waste Is a Failure of Design
    “Sustainability is learning how to work within limitations and parameters, which, in my opinion, is great for creativity,” said Hearst. “As Stella was saying, we don’t live in an endless cornucopia of natural resources. We have to balance production and consumption.… Waste, at the end of the day, is a design flaw. It doesn’t exist in nature."
    "We have to stop and consider the waste. It’s spiraled out of control,” McCartney reiterated pointing to figures that showed that during shutdowns in February carbon emissions in China lessened by 25%. “We’ve seen in such a short period of time how incredible nature is, how she bounces back so quickly when we just stop for a second. I think that’s so hopeful. Will we ever be able to heal Earth? It looks like we can.…We have to come out with hope. We have to realize we consume too much.”
    Both designers pointed to using upcycled materials and sustainable fabrics as a means to reduce waste. “At Stella McCartney the biggest environmental positive other than sourcing is we don’t kill animals, and it really has a massive, massive positive footprint on our environmental profit and loss. That is a fact. Maybe the good of this is that people slow down, they ask more questions, and they’re a little bit more considerate,” McCartney concluded.