Written by Scottie Andrew, CNN
Stella Tennant made her name as a model by avoiding the traditionally feminine aesthetic that turned her contemporaries into stars. With her short pixie cut and piercing look, she was the sdarling of the 90s fashion.
Tennant, who maintained his lead throughout his long career in fashion, died this week at age 50, Vogue reported. Tennant’s family, including her husband, David Lasnet, and their four children, confirmed the news in a statement to the fashion agency.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the sudden death of Stella Tennant on December 22, 2020,” the statement said. “Stella was a wonderful woman and an inspiration to all of us. She will be sorely missed.”
Tennant was a talented model with a more punk look than British supermodels Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. Your hair used to be cut short and spiky, and you rarely caught it with a smile on the pages of Vogue.
Stella Tennant, seen here in 2011, was the muse of Karl Lagerfeld, the late Chanel boss. Credit: Remy de la Mauviniere / AP
For all the advantage it brought to editorial fashion, the designers loved it. She was a muse for fashion celebrities like Helmut Lang, whose shows she described among her favorite strollers, and the late Karl Lagerfeld when he directed Chanel. She continued to appear on the runways until the beginning of this year, when she walked to Valentino for Paris Fashion Week.
Born to aristocrats in the UK and raised on a sheep farm in Scotland, Tennant started modeling “accidentally”, she told British Vogue in 2018. Although many models of her time were discovered by scouts in her teens, Tennant was still sent pictures to casting agents in their early 20s. She graduated from art school and planned to study sculpture if modeling didn’t take off.
A 1993 British Vogue film called “London Girls” proved to be his big break. Tennant, his eyes surrounded by heavy black eyeliner, wore an Alexander McQueen dress and a subversive piercing on the septum. Surrounded by seasoned models, the 22-year-old was invited to appear in a Versace ad.
Soon, she was appearing at up to 75 fashion shows per season, she said in a 2018 interview. She grew tired of the hectic pace of fashion when she and her then husband decided to have children.
“I gave everything, all my energy and time, and now we’re going to go out and have a family together,” she told the Document Journal fashion publication in 2018. “And I thought it was me leaving. ”
When fashion magazines started to prefer a more traditional and glamorous look to models in the 2000s, Tennant said he felt his spotlight was waning.
“The agency didn’t really know what to do with me,” she recalled. “I thought, ‘Well, this is not a surprise. I had my little moment, and the fashion has changed, and I’m going to move on too.'”
Tennant continued to model, although less frequently than he did at age 20. Occasionally, some of her four children would show up for photo shoots with her, including in 2019, when she and her daughter Iris starred in an ad encouraging UK residents to make second-hand purchases. (Tennant devoted much of his time to promoting sustainable causes.)
Perhaps her most memorable moment of the past decade was in 2012, when she and other British supermodels strutted at the London Olympic Games Closing Ceremony. Beside Moss, Campbell and more, Tennant wore a Christopher Kane suit – the only woman among them who was not in a dress. Her hair was dyed black and cut in the style of an irregular mullet. Its edge had only become sharper.
The fashion world cries
Costars and Tennant’s frequent contributors mourned his death online.
Campbell, in an Instagram post, called Tennant “an act of class in every way”.
“When we saw each other, we always started where we left off,” she wrote. “Easy and the epitome of Grace, even when you sit in a corner doing the tip of the needle.”
On Twitter, Versace
said Tennant was the muse of the late founder of the house, Gianni, for many years and a “friend of the family”.
Nina Garcia, editor in chief of Elle and a judge on the “Project Runway”,
said Tennant “blended fragility and innate elegance with an androgynous appearance” that inspired many designers.
With Tennant’s death, fashion has lost one of its favorite nonconformists.
