Stella: Don’t call me Daddy’s girl

As Sir Paul McCartney ruefully says, "Nobody is Beatle-proof", least of all his fashion-designer daughter Stella. At the age of 25, Stella McCartney became the new designer to the house of Chloe in April 1997, and her predecessor, Karl Lagerfeld, sniped, "I think they should have taken a big name. They did - but in music, not fashion. Let's hope she's as gifted as her father."

Now 33, McCartney is creative director of her Gucci Group-backed own label. She did not listen to her mother, Linda, who warned her: "It's such a competitive, fickle world. Do you really want to do something where people judge you?"

And how they have. Even lowly British designer Jeff Banks had a go, calling her "just an amateur who has made it in the fashion world on the back of her dad's money".

Last year, Gucci Group chief executive Robert Polet told McCartney and her stablemates Alexander McQueen and Nicholas Ghesquiere at Balenciaga that they had until 2007 to turn a profit.

Since Gucci bought 50.1 per cent of Stella McCartney for 6 million ($15.8 million) in 2001, the label has remained in the red. But this is a result largely of investment in New York and London stores. Sales of Stella McCartney increased by 50 per cent last year and she expects to turn a profit two years ahead of her deadline.

The knives have been out for McCartney since her graduation from Central St Martin's fashion college in London in 1995. "I thought everyone hated me," she says of her remote attitude at fashion college. What they called arrogance she called shyness. Fellow St Martin's students were furious when McCartney stole press attention when her friends Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell modelled her graduation collection. McCartney snapped: "Other students ask their friends to model and I've asked mine."

Days after McCartney's autumn/winter 2005 own-label collection was shown in Paris, the jury is still out on her bankability.

The Independent fashion writer Susie Rushton reported: "McCartney's position on the fashion landscape has often seemed not to extend far beyond dressing her celebrity friends ... [but] the confident collection demonstrated how McCartney's signatures have matured and become more convincing propositions."

The Guardian said, "After a chilly year or two on the sidelines, her look is being welcomed back", while the Daily Telegraph noted the absence of McCartney's usual celebrity front row.

The reason for McCartney's absence from the runway this season was the February 25 birth of her first son, Miller Alasdhair James Willis, with husband Alasdhair Willis. Vogue confounded the critics who said McCartney's no-show was irrelevant - the inference being that McCartney is propped up by talented studio staff - by reporting that "Stella worked on and was able to complete the collection".

She was signing off outfits from digital photographs hours before she went into labour.

Stella McCartney has an ally in Donatella Versace who followed her late brother as creative director of the house and cannot quell rumours that she too is merely a figurehead. Unlike Versace, Stella's private life is intentionally unglamorous. She says she's a "really boring" country girl and is keen to emphasise her love for horse riding, walking and swimming, though it's hard to imagine that your life is that boring when your best friends are Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Moss.

Chloe president Mounir Moufarrige's shrewdness in appointing the 25-year-old McCartney was endorsed by a 500 per cent rise in profits and a booming press profile. Before her, Chloe was about as relevant in high fashion as Laura Ashley. McCartney and her Notting Hillbilly posse gave the label a hip replacement.

McCartney admits she designs clothes "me and my friends would like to wear". Her mixture of slinky lingerie and tomboy tailoring struck a chord with girls who didn't want to be slutty or bourgeois. McCartney dedicated endless collections to her mother, Linda. Like her, McCartney is an animal-rights activist who will not work with fur or leather.

Karl Lagerfeld calls her principles "grotesque". "Everyone knows Gucci has made millions of dollars by working with leather," he says. "When she signed with them, she closed the chapter as far as holding these sorts of scruples with any kind of credibility."

McCartney is the kind of girl who squares up to controversy, blithely using Beatles music for early Chloe catwalk shoes and paying homage to her mother's gypsy spirit. In 1999, a year after Linda's death from cancer, McCartney finally snapped back about the relentless "Beatle's daughter" barbs.

"When I would make a good drawing in primary school, it was because my Dad was famous. Or if I got a part in a school play, it was because Dad was a Beatle. What do I do? Do I become a smackhead and live off my parents' fortune?"

To her credit, McCartney is never snapped falling out of nightclubs. This could be due to a "normal, idyllic childhood" when she would call herself Stella Martin to escape recognition.

Marriage seems to have mellowed McCartney's ladette streak, and this is no bad thing. She can now admit she was "trying too hard" at Chloe when she emblazoned outfits with slang.

Though her latest show featured handbags decorated with horse brasses, McCartney's look is now largely elegant and mature.

She is a good designer - but not a great one - who just happens to have a famous dad.

- INDEPENDENT