Meet the man behind Hunter Wellies

You’d have thought turning Hunter wellies into a cultural phenomenon would have been enough, but Alasdhair Willis did so while bringing up four children with Stella McCartney. Laura Craik meets a model of modern manhood
Alasdhair Willis
Laura Craik6 June 2019

‘You could eat your dinner off him,’ is what my mother would say if she met Alasdhair Willis.

And it’s true: he is immaculate in a pristine white sweatshirt, the 47-year-old’s grey hair working for him in a way that it doesn’t for Brad Pitt. You can’t even resent him for winning at life — his wife is fashion designer Stella McCartney and he is creative director of Hunter, purveyor of the most famous wellies in the world — because he’s so nice. Just an everyday dad of four, born in Middlesbrough, living between Notting Hill and Worcestershire, getting up at 4.45am three days a week to take one of his daughters swimming.

Willis speaks with the confidence of an experienced parent. His and McCartney’s eldest, Miller, is now 14, while Bailey is 12, Beckett is 11 and Reiley is eight. How does he find the work/life balance? He laughs. ‘I’m not going to lie. It’s not easy. We have four children, all very different, all incredibly demanding for various reasons.’ Demanding? ‘Only in terms of supporting their interests. One of them is into swimming, the boys are into football and rugby, my other daughter is into gymnastics, so it’s a lot. You just keep going. I do need moments where I can decompress for a while. Meditation is useful for that.’

He says that communication is key to keeping everything running smoothly, but ‘the conversations that you start having with children as they reach a certain age can be exhausting. It’s no longer a case of, “Oh, I’ll read you a book, darling.” It’s, “Okay, we need to have a conversation about bullying, social media, the planet…”’ Not that he ever shies away from that challenge. ‘We try to encourage communication. No conversation is out of bounds.’

For Willis, boys in particular need encouragement and emotional support. ‘Boys don’t often get that — the internalisation of their emotion is still very prevalent. I see that in my sons and across my friends’ kids as well.’ Does he think there’s a crisis in masculinity? ‘I don’t know if I’d say a crisis. It is certainly harder to be a guy now, from an emotional perspective.’ He pauses before clarifying. ‘We don’t have to go out and fight wars, or do the heroics that our forefathers had to. On an emotional level, and what your role is in the family and in society, we are something of a guinea pig generation of guys. How that works out, we have no way of knowing. The positive thing that I feel almost privileged to be living through is the acceptance of the variability of what masculinity is.’

Alaisdhair Willis

It was always Willis’s ambition, since taking the helm at Hunter in 2013, to grow the rubber boot brand into a lifestyle giant. The strategy has paid off: its latest sales figures are the best in Hunter’s 163-year history (it began as the North British Rubber Company in 1856). Record revenues announced this week of £113.8 million were achieved in 2018, up 9 per cent. ‘It’s fantastic, particularly in the context of what’s been going on in the world — the economic turmoil,’ notes Willis. ‘During times of uncertainty, as human beings our natural instinct is to gravitate towards security and the things we know. That’s where Hunter comes into its own: we have that incredible emotional connection.’

While Glastonbury is important to sales (ever since Kate Moss wore black Hunters, bare legs ’n’ hot pants in 2005, the brand has been cemented in the minds of festival-goers as The Boot to wear), it’s only one event of many at which Hunter has appeared. As well as a presence at Coachella, Mighty Hoopla and an Urban Camping event in Brooklyn this summer, Hunter is also supporting Pride month, having launched a rainbow-soled edition of its Play boot, and has collaborated with Peppa Pig (one for the kids).

Sustainability isn’t the first word that springs to mind when you think of rubber boots, but the McCartney/Willis’s 16-year marriage would have headed to the divorce courts long ago were they not as one in their commitment to the environment. Festival season represents the perfect stage on which to promote Hunter’s collaboration with Stella McCartney, and its lovechild, a sustainable boot with an inner bootee made not from the standard neoprene but from Yulex, a plant-derived alternative. ‘The rubber is from a certified, sustainable source, but what’s hugely positive about this initiative with Stella is that we’ve used that learning — and the boot itself — and taken it to some of our rubber suppliers in other parts of the world to help transform the rest of our supply chain,’ he grins proudly. ‘So we can use this and start to do good elsewhere. That’s the way Stella works, and how you make things happen. She’s been doing it for 20 years.’

Stella McCartney and Alasdhair Willis
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And she’s always been ahead of the curve. These days, it is smart for any brand to be incorporating sustainability and a social conscience into what it does. ‘This generation of kids is incredibly savvy, with a lot of great values,’ he nods. ‘Social media isn’t always healthy for children, but it can really help inform them and allow them to be part of the conversation. My 12-year-old daughter wants to be a part of this movement. The future is with these kids. We just have to make sure we haven’t left it in such a state that it’s going to be very difficult, verging on impossible, to turn around.’

The flipside to being #woke at the age of eight is the worry it breeds. ‘What isn’t being fully acknowledged or realised is the anxiety levels in children being caused by this,’ says Willis. ‘I see it all the time. My eldest son, Miller, feels it. It’s really hard. Watching our national treasure Sir David Attenborough, the message of what we’re doing to our planet is getting stronger, louder but also more alarming. The narrative that this [planet] will be gone in 20 or 30 years is quite hard for a kid to take.’

"The narrative that this [planet] will be gone in 20 or 30 years is quite hard for a kid to take"

Alaisdhair Willis

As for Glastonbury, he and ‘Stell’ will be there as usual, though not with their kids. ‘They are badgering me constantly, but I’m resisting. When they were very small, Stella and I made what I would say was a mistake — “Let’s take the kids!” — and it was hellish. I see families with their kids and it’s all very laid-back, but I’m not that person. I can’t just see my four kids wander off into 200,000 people and be chilled about it.’

Instead, the couple will be with their friends — Dave Grohl (‘we love the Foos’), Bradley Cooper and ‘a lot of not-famous friends who nobody will care about. It’s not a celebrity-fest.’ Maybe not, but it will definitely be a Hunter-fest.

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