Written by By Scottie Andrew, CNN
Stella Tennant made her title in modeling by eschewing the historically female aesthetics that made stars out of her contemporaries. Along with her blunt pixie minimize and piercing stare, she was the s
darling of ’90s style.
Tennant, who maintained her edge all through her prolonged profession in style, died this week at age 50,
Vogue reported. Tennant’s household, together with her husband, David Lasnet, and their 4 kids, confirmed the information in a press release to the style outlet.
“It’s with nice unhappiness we announce the sudden dying of Stella Tennant on 22 December 2020,” the assertion learn. “Stella was a beautiful girl and an inspiration to us all. She can be enormously missed.”
Tennant was a gifted mannequin with a punkier look than fellow British supermodels Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. Her hair was usually minimize quick and spiky, and also you’d
not often catch her crack a smile within the pages of Vogue.
Stella Tennant, seen right here in 2011, was a muse of Karl Lagerfeld, the late head of Chanel. Credit score: Remy de la Mauviniere/AP
For all the sting she dropped at editorial style, designers adored her. She was a muse to style luminaries like Helmut Lang, whose exhibits she described amongst her favorites to stroll in, and the late Karl Lagerfeld when he headed Chanel. She continued to seem on runways till early this 12 months, when she walked for Valentino for Paris Style Week.
Born to UK aristocrats and raised on a sheep farm in Scotland, Tennant bought into modeling “by accident,” she informed
British Vogue in 2018. Whereas many fashions of her period have been found by scouts as teenagers, Tennant was nonetheless submitting pictures to casting brokers in her early 20s. She’d graduated from artwork faculty and deliberate to pursue sculpture if modeling did not take off.
A 1993 British Vogue characteristic referred to as “London Ladies” proved to be her huge break. Tennant, her eyes ringed by heavy black eyeliner, wore an Alexander McQueen gown and a subversive septum piercing. Surrounded by skilled fashions, the 22-year-old was requested on the shoot to seem in an advert for Versace.
Quickly, she was showing in as many as 75 runway exhibits a season, she
mentioned in a 2018 interview. She bored with style’s frenetic tempo when she and her then-husband determined to have kids.
“I’ve given it every little thing, all my power and time, and now we will go off and have a household collectively,” she informed style publication the Doc Journal in 2018. “And I assumed that was me signing out.”
When style magazines began to desire a extra historically glamorous search for fashions within the 2000s, Tennant mentioned she felt her highlight was shrinking.
“The company did not actually know what to do with me,” she remembered. “I assumed, ‘Nicely, that is not a shock. I’ve had my little second, and style’s moved on, and I will be transferring alongside, too.'”
Tennant continued to mannequin, albeit much less regularly than she did in her 20s. Once in a while, a few of her 4 kids would seem in shoots together with her, together with in 2019, when
she and her daughter Iris starred in an advert encouraging UK residents to buy second hand. (Tennant devoted a lot of her time to selling sustainable causes.)
Maybe her most memorable second of the final decade got here in 2012, when she and fellow British supermodels strutted within the
Closing Ceremony of the London Summer time Olympics. Alongside Moss, Campbell and extra, Tennant donned a Christopher Kane go well with — the one girl amongst them not in a gown. Her hair was dyed black and minimize within the model of a jagged mullet. Her edge had solely gotten sharper.
The style world mourns
Tennant’s frequent costars and collaborators mourned her passing on-line.
Campbell, in an Instagram publish,
referred to as Tennant “a category act in each means.”
“After we would see one another at all times picked up from the place we left off,” she wrote. “Easy and the epitome of Grace, even while you would sit in a nook doing all of your needle level.”
On Twitter, Versace
mentioned Tennant had been the muse of late home founder Gianni for a few years and a “pal of the household.”
Nina Garcia, Elle editor-in-chief and “Undertaking Runway” decide,
mentioned Tennant “combined fragility and an innate magnificence with an androgynous look” that impressed scores of designers.
With Tennant’s dying, style has misplaced one among its favourite nonconformists.
