McCartney’s world has never been what you might call one-note. She grew up the daughter of an impossibly wealthy, famous pop star, but living on an organic farm and attending the local state school. At 15, she interned with Christian Lacroix; by the time she completed her foundation course at Ravensbourne and enrolled at Central Saint Martins she had notched up placements at Vogue, Betty Jackson and Joseph. Hired by Chloé soon after graduating, she confounded critics with a series of well-reviewed collections; but in 2001, her star took a dive when the first own-name Stella McCartney show, featuring Cockney rhyming slang, took a critical battering. Since then, she has steadily built a business with an aesthetic that spans from sportswear (her Team GB designs grew out of a decade’s experience designing Stella McCartney for Adidas) to a growing presence in eveningwear. (Her name is increasingly dropped on the red carpet, despite the fact they don’t “actively compete” in that market, as her PR puts it. “We don’t pay people to wear dresses, is what he means,” McCartney chimes in.) Oh, and somehow in the midst of all this she has had two sons (Miller, nine, and Beckett, six) and two daughters (Bailey, seven, and Reiley, three) with Alasdhair Willis, whom she married 11 years ago. The family spend weekdays in west London and weekends at a Georgian manor house with horses, and home-grown kale, in the 400-acre garden.