Stella McCartney at the launch of her sportswear collection in New York. (AFP)

London, Sept. 9: The designer Stella McCartney has joined forces with Adidas to create her own collection for women.

Adidas said yesterday that it was the first time a catwalk designer had created an everyday sportswear range.

The collection, Adidas by Stella McCartney, includes clothes for running, swimming and going to the gym.

Items range in price from ?27 to ?137.

McCartney, the daughter of Paul McCartney, worked with a number of athletes on the clothes, which were launched in New York. She said she intended to bring dignity and design into women?s sportswear.

?Go into sports shops and most of the stuff available looks like My Little Pony on heat,? she said last night.

?It?s all baby pink, candy-floss, baby blue, head-to-toe. What grown-up woman wants to look like an 80s teenager? I find it degrading. It?s so inappropriate. Women deserve to look good and feel good when they?re working out. They don?t want to look like pastel Barbies.?

The clothes are a mix of McCartney?s own ready-to-wear design ethos and high-tech, performance sports input from Adidas.

T-shirts tops and jogging pants, in revolutionary fibres which draw heat from the body, are in a colour palette of dusky rose, lemon and grey mixed with brights such as infra-red and court green.

Typical McCartney details include laser-edge eyelets, contour seaming to follow the natural curves of the body and raw-edge trims in contrast colours. There are reversible jackets in fabrics that look like tulle, in a silver-foil-print, with flashing lights and reflective elements, jogging tops with half-glove thumb-guards and a boxing-type towelling robe.

Adidas said the partnership was long-term and there were plans to create outfits for other sports.

The collection will go on sale in selected department stores in the US, Japan and Europe ? including Britain ? next February.

The deal marks a high point for the designer who suffered serious criticism last year when her eponymous fashion label suffered losses of ?4.5 million. Figures showed that her designs made her company only ?434,000.

Jeff Banks, the designer, called her clothes amateurish and put her success down to pedigree rather than talent. And Elizabeth Jagger, the model, criticised McCartney for being ?lazy in her design?.

McCartney lost her key patron in the industry when Tom Ford, the chief designer at Gucci, announced seven months ago he was leaving.

However, the designer boasts a roster of A-list celebrity clients including Madonna, Gywneth Paltrow and Liv Tyler, all of whom attended her wedding last year to the publisher Alasdhair Willis on the tiny Scottish island of Bute.

Her father often attends her fashion shows, giving her the type of publicity other designers can only dream of.