Written by Scottie Andrew, CNN
Stella Tennant became famous in modeling by avoiding the traditionally feminine aesthetic that made her contemporaries star. With her blunt pixie cut and penetrating look, she was the 90s fashionista.
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 outlet.
“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 she inspired us all. She will be missed.”
Tennant was a gifted model with a more punk look than fellow British supermodels Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. She often had her hair cut short and spiky, and you rarely caught her smiling at the pages of Vogue.
Stella Tennant, seen here in 2011, was a muse of Karl Lagerfeld, the late head of Chanel. Credit: Remy de la Mauviniere / AP
Despite the advantage it brought to editorial fashion, designers adored it. She was a muse of fashion lights like Helmut Lang, whose shows she described among her favorites to enter, and the late Karl Lagerfeld when she directed Chanel. She continued to appear on the catwalks until earlier this year, when she went to Valentino for Paris Fashion Week.
Born to British aristocrats and raised on a sheep farm in Scotland, Tennant began modeling “accidentally,” she told British Vogue in 2018. Although many models of her time were discovered by explorers when they were teenagers. , Tennant was still sending photos to casting agents his first 20 years. He had graduated from art school and planned to pursue sculpture if modeling didn’t take off.
A 1993 British Vogue feature film called “London Girls” turned out to be her big break. Tennant, his eyes glued to a heavy black eyeliner, wore an Alexander McQueen suit and a subversive partition punch. Surrounded by experienced models, the 22-year-old was asked during filming to appear in a Versace ad.
Soon, she appeared on up to 75 catwalk shows per season, she said in a 2018 interview. She got tired of the frantic pace of fashion when she and her then-husband decided to have children.
“I gave it my all, all my energy and time, and now we’re going to have a family together,” she told the fashion publication in the Document Journal in 2018. “And I thought I was closing the session.”
When fashion magazines began to prefer a traditionally more glamorous look for models in the 2000s, Tennant said he felt his focus was shrinking.
“The agency didn’t know what to do with me,” he recalled. “I thought,‘ Well, that’s not a surprise. I’ve had my little moment and fashion has gone on, and I’ll go on too. ”
Tennant continued to model, albeit less frequently than in his twenties. At times, some of her four children appeared in outbursts with her, including in 2019, when she and her daughter Iris starred in an ad that encouraged UK residents to buy second-hand. (Tennant devoted much of his time to promoting sustainable causes.)
Perhaps her most memorable moment of the last decade came in 2012, when she and other British supermodels attended the closing ceremony of the London Summer Olympics. Along with Moss, Campbell and more, Tennant dressed in a Christopher Kane dress, the only woman not wearing a dress. Her hair was dyed black and cut in the style of a serrated bruise. Its edge had only become sharper.
The fashion world cries
Tennant’s frequent collaborators lamented his passage through the Internet.
Campbell, in an Instagram post, told Tennant “a class act in every way.”
“When we saw each other we always picked them up from where we left them,” he wrote. “Effortless and Grace’s emblem, even when you sit in a corner making the tip of the needle.”
On Twitter, Versace
dit Tennant had been the muse of the late founder of the Gianni house for many years and a “family friend.”
Nina Garcia, Editor-in-Chief of Elle and Judge of “Project Runway”,
dit Tennant “mixed fragility and innate elegance with an androgynous look” that inspired dozens of designers.
With Tennant’s death, fashion has lost one of its favorite mavericks.
