Stella McCartney 'embarrassed' she chose friends Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell to model her college show

When Stella McCartney graduated from Central St Martin’s in 1995, her degree show could have been much like any other: friends modelling her collection while her proud parents watched on from the front row.

When those close friends turned out to be Kate Moss, Yasmin Le Bon and Naomi Campbell, she caused uproar.

More than 20 years on, the fashion designed has admitted she is embarrassed to recall how her show hit the headlines, claiming she was merely “naive”.

The show saw the supermodels of the day don McCartney’s homemade creations, while her father created a bespoke soundtrack for them to strut down the catwalk.

Linda and Sir Paul McCartney sat in the front row to watch their daughter’s friends show off her wares, which were swiftly bought up by London Boutique, Tokio.

Appearing on Desert Island Discs, McCartney was reminded of the moment, asked how she felt the next day when she saw the headlines it created.

“I look back on that moment and just feel a bit embarrassed that I was so naive,” she disclosed.

“They were my mates and that’s who I was hanging out with when I was at college, so when it came to choosing the models for my degree show I kind of thought I might as well ask my friends.”

In fact, she claimed, she so wanted to avoid benefitting from her father’s famous name that she called herself Stella Martin through school.

“It’s always been something I try to get my head around, this idea that people know a lot more about me than I know about them from the outset,” she said of fame.  

“I would always go under a different name, actually. I would always be Stella Martin at school. That was always a bit confusing or people.

“When I started college I tried to do it under a different name. I would never tell anyone.

“The discovery was always a bit painful, when you could tell people in the corridor were kind of looking at you differently. It would always be a bit ‘oh God’.”

Speaking of life at home with Sir Paul, the designer said: “Dad would come home every day in the studio and we’d listen to what he’d created that day in the office.

“He always jokes that he literally couldn’t get arrested. He’d pick up his guitar and be jamming out and we’d be like ‘Dad, shut up, we want to watch telly’.

“He’d be like, people would die to hear me play and my children are telling me to shut up.”

The full interview can be heard on Desert Island Discs, on Radio 4 today.