Composed of Scottie Andrew, CNN
Stella Tennant made her name in modeling, avoiding the traditionally feminine aesthetic that made stars from her contemporaries. With her blunt cut and penetrating look, she was the biggest fad of the ’90s.
Tennant, who has maintained his advantage throughout his long career in fashion, died this week at the age of 50, Vogue reported. Tennant’s family, including her husband, David Lasnet, and their four children confirmed the news in a statement to the fashion press.
“We sadly announce the sudden death of Stella Tennant on December 22, 2020,” the statement said. “Stella has been a wonderful woman and an inspiration to us all. She will miss you very much.”
Tennant was a model endowed with a more boring look than her British supermodel colleagues Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. Her hair was often short and short, and you rarely caught her smiling in the pages of Vogue.
Stella Tennant, seen here in 2011, was a muse of Karl Lagerfeld, the late boss of Chanel. Credit: Remy de la Mauviniere / AP
With all the advantages it brought to editorial fashion, the designers adored it. She was a muse of fashion lights like Helmut Lang, whose shows she described as her favorite to go to, and the late Karl Lagerfeld when he drove Chanel. She continued to appear on the runways until the beginning of this year, when she went to Valentino for Paris Fashion Week.
Born to aristocrats in the UK and raised on a sheep farm in Scotland, Tennant began modeling “accidentally”, she told British Vogue in 2018. While many models from her era were discovered by teenage scouts. , Tennant was still sending photos to distribution agents in her early 20s. He had graduated from art school and planned to study sculpture if modeling didn’t take off.
A 1993 British Vogue feature film called “London Girls” proved to be her big break. Tennant, his eyes surrounded by a heavy black eye pencil, wore an Alexander McQueen dress and a subversive septum piercing. Surrounded by experienced models, the 22-year-old was asked during the filming to appear in an advertisement for Versace.
She soon appeared in 75 runway shows per season, she said in a 2018 interview. She was tired of the frantic pace of fashion when she and her then-husband decided to have children.
“I gave her everything, all my energy and time, and now we are leaving and we have a family together,” she told the fashion journal Document Journal in 2018. “And I thought I was disconnecting. ”
When fashion magazines began to prefer a more glamorous look traditionally for 2000s models, Tennant said he felt the spotlight dimmed.
“The agency didn’t really know what to do with me,” she recalled. “I thought, ‘Well, that’s not a surprise. I had my little moment, and the fashion continued, and I will move too. ”
Tennant continued to model, though less frequently than in 20 years. Occasionally, some of her four children appear in films with her, including in 2019, when she and her daughter Iris played in an ad that encouraged UK residents to buy second-hand. (Tennant has devoted much of his time to promoting lasting causes.)
Perhaps her most memorable moment of the last decade came in 2012, when she and her British supermodel colleagues showed up for the closing ceremony of the London Summer Olympics. Along with Moss, Campbell and many others, Tennant wore a Christopher Kane suit – the only woman among them who was not dressed. Her hair was dyed black and cut in the style of a jagged roar. Its edge had only become sharper.
The fashion world is crying
Tennant’s co-workers and frequent collaborators mourned his passing online.
Campbell, in an Instagram post, called Tennant “a class act in every way.”
“When we saw each other always get up where we left off,” she wrote. “Effortless and embodied Grace, even when you’re sitting in a corner doing the needle.”
On Twitter, Versace
said Tennant had been the muse of the late founder of the Gianni house for many years and a “family friend.”
Nina Garcia, Elle Editor-in-Chief and Project Runway Judge,
said Tennant “mixed fragility and innate elegance with an androgynous look” that inspired dozens of designers.
With Tennant’s death, fashion lost one of its favorite nonconformists.
