Stella McCartney Launches Kids Clothing Line

Stella McCartney, fashion designer to the stars, is taking on a whole new clientele - and they're under five feet tall! In collaboration with Gap Kids and Baby Gap, McCartney is unveiling a one-time-only line of children’s clothes. Launching in the UK, France, Japan, the U.S. and Canada, the line includes everything from ultra-soft cashmere blankets for newborns to brushed cotton blazers with silk lapels, and those wool military jackets.

Stella, 38, mother of three children under the age of five - two boys, Miller, 4, and Beckett, 1 1/2, and a girl, Bailey, 3 1/2 - sat down with W magazine to promote her new children's line, and discuss why she finally gave in to designing for the little people of the world.

On why she is designing kids clothes: ‘When are you going to do kids? When are you going to do kids? It was just a question that was wearing me out.”

On not being able to find good kids clothes: “I find there’s nothing between the two worlds—it’s kind of cheap or expensive, and they look like that,” she explains. “Some expensive labels are too conservative and twee, and the cheaper stuff is a little less classy and tasteful.”

On dressing kids over the age of 4: “I’m quite aware that after the age of four and a half, kids actually don’t want to wear what their parents want to put on them anymore,” she says, raising a knowing eyebrow. So she commissioned her 4-year-old son Miller and her colleagues’ daughters to help with some of the designs. “My son is obsessed with superheroes, so I’m like, Okay, I’m going to create my own superhero,” says McCartney. “I’d take it home and I’d be like, ‘Do you approve of our superhero?’ And he loved it. So I thought, I’ve kind of had a sign-off on that.”

On choosing regular kids for the ad campaign: “Perfect little kids are not really very me. I wanted to have a bit of realness. When you’re talking about this kind of accessibility and children, it’s really important that you feel comfortable throwing the lot of it in the washing machine and not being too precious with it.”

On her collection: “Nothing is really matching, which is very much what I do. And a lot of the designs just get better with age. To me, the fabric is so important, especially on a child, as they are so aware when things are scratchy.”

On shopping for her kids: "I personally prefer shopping for my kids’ clothes to shopping for my own. I just get more enjoyment out of it.”