The fashion designer – who is a strict vegetarian and animal rights activist – has banned tuna and other seafood from her offices because she doesn't want visitors to think she is secretly eating animals.

The 38-year-old star explained: "Sometimes, at lunchtime, I can really smell fish when people are eating, and then I'll shout, 'OK guys, enough fish.’ My argument is, if a journalist comes into our office and it stinks of fish, that's weird." Stella's inherited her love of animals from her parents, Beatles star Sir Paul McCartney and his late first wife Linda McCartney, a committed animal rights activist.

She told Guardian: "The way my parents brought me up to see the world is still absolutely key to what I am about. The beliefs I was raised with – to respect animals and to be aware of nature, to understand that we share this planet with other creatures – have had a huge impact on me.

"I was brought up to understand that we are all here on planet earth together. The idea of taking responsibility for what we take out of the earth... it's not something we sat down and had lessons in. As a way of thinking it came quite naturally."