Amongst heatwaves, politics and everything else going on in the world, it was seemingly World Beatles Day on Thursday, something Stella McCartney was happy point out during her session with eBay President and CEO Jamie Iannone on the circular economy.
(And on that point, the fashion designer relayed a funny anecdote– when she was a child, a piece of George Harrison’s unfinished piece of breakfast toast had just sold at auction for thousands, at which point McCartney clocked her Dad Paul eating his breakfast and tried surreptitiously to nick the crusts off his plate.)
As she neatly noted, that incident really sums up the power of the circular economy, in which anything can potentially be resold and vintage, or “preloved” items, are all the rage.
The session noted that what was once a niche activity is now a major cultural and economic force. Fashionistas, especially Gen Z, now see second hand items as stylish as well as being more sustainable. For eBay, Iannone noted, the goal is to make it “easier to sell on eBay than throw it in the trash,” he said, and it’s now using AI to help them photograph their items and automate the process.
McCartney, meanwhile, argued the case for the sustainable fabrics that she uses in her collections (including plant-based sequins and fungi-based vegan leather) and stated her belief that items should be designed with second or third lives in mind. She described working with ’deadstock’ fabrics as a source of creative inspiration.
Elsewhere in the Palais today, a curiosity: Rich Silverstein, the US ad legend of Goodby Silverstein & Partners fame, created an AI Broadway Musical, based on the Cuban Missile Crisis; a sort of mash-up of Hamilton and the Book of Mormon, featuring AI-generated all singing and dancing version of Kennedy, Fidel Castro and Kruschev.
It was clever and witty, and while undoubtedly amusing to fans of the agency’s zany humour, many of the very international audience in the Debussy Theatre looked just a tad mystified.
