Stella McCartney is grateful to have been raised by parents who were "change agents" who taught her to be environmentally conscious.
The British fashion designer is the daughter of Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney and his late wife Linda McCartney, both of whom adopted vegetarianism in the 1970s and made sure they instilled a love of nature and animals in their child and her siblings, Heather, Mary and James.
Linda – who passed away from breast cancer in 1998 at the age of 56 – was also an animal rights activist and launched her own vegetarian food range which is still available now.
Stella had a very happy childhood on her family’s farm and she has tried to replicate that lifestyle for her and her husband Alasdhair Willis’ own kids, Miller, 14, Bailey, 12, Beckett, 11, and Reiley, nine, at their Georgian manor house in Gloucestershire, South West England, where they can enjoy the outdoors and indulge in activities such as horse riding.
Speaking in the January 2020 issue of Vogue US magazine – of which she is a cover star – she said: "I was privileged. I grew up on an organic farm; I saw the seasons. My parents were vegetarians – they were change agents."
Explaining why her country home is so important to her and her family, she added: "It was a desperate mission to find land so that I could ride my horse.
"Being out in a beautiful garden is nicer than sitting in a beautiful room … You know what I was doing the other weekend? I was riding my horse barefoot and bareback, with my daughter [Reiley]. It was about as good as it gets."
Stella and Alasdhair have spent the past 15 years changing their home and its grounds into a "redbrick box within a garden within a garden within a garden" and it even has its own off-the-grid sewage system disguised as a series of reed-filled ponds.
Boasting about having her own private sewage system, the 48-year-old fashionista joked: "See? Being an environmentalist can be sexy!"
Stella McCartney praises dad Paul McCartney as a ‘change agent’
