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Those who toil in the fashion industry may not shape our lives to quite the same extent as some of the luminaries who make it on to Time's "Most Influential" list, like Oprah Winfrey, or Zac Ephron, or the evil doers who invented Twitter. But the fact that the list includes just one fashion world figure is still a bit of a surprise. So who is it? Anna Wintour? Tom Ford? Gisele, Naomi, or Kate perhaps? Nope. The people at Time have named Stella McCartney as one of the world's most influential people. But don't worry, they asked Gwyneth Paltrow to account for their controversial decision. Enlighten us, Gwynnie!

[Stella] is a vegetarian. I mention this because you cannot accurately characterize Stella McCartney, 37, without underlining that she is a vegetarian. Always has been. And even if you are not interested in being a vegetarian, somehow Stella gets you to believe. She manages to convince you (never sanctimoniously, never from a soapbox) that killing animals is needless and cruel and bad for the environment. It may last the duration of just one dinner, but you start to feel a bit sad for your neighbor's lamb and a bit embarrassed by your chicken.

Thank you, Gwyneth, that makes absolutely as much sense as your words always do! Stella's firebrand rhetoric makes you like, totally convinced that eating and wearing animals is bad, until you next want to eat meat and wear leather. Of course.

But what's that you say? Stella "puts her money where her mouth is" by designing vegan bags and shoes? Would that be the money she receives from her paymaster/major luxury leather manufacturer the Gucci Group? We'll try to bear that in mind the next time we're deciding between an ugly Stella bag made of God knows what, and a lovely bag from her stablemate Bottega Veneta made of dead baby animal.

Stella McCartney by Gwyneth Paltrow [Time]
The 2009 Time 100 [Time]