display
She had a face that told stories.
Karl Lagerfeld saw a resemblance to Coco Chanel, indie magazines like “The Face” underlined his changeable genderlessness in shoots with bright lights and without make-up, “Vogue” emphasized his aristocratic grace, the gooseneck and the perfect cheekbones.
She was an aristocrat too: Stella Tennant was the granddaughter of Andrew Cavendish, the eleventh Duke of Devonshire, and Deborah Mitford, the youngest of the famous Mitford Sisters who were involved in many scandals.
The Scottish native brought exactly the right résumé for a career in fashion.
But more than her origins, it was her androgynous look that made her the perfect face for the transfigured consumer society of the 90s and one of the most important top models of the grunge era.
As it became known the day before Christmas Eve, she died on December 22nd at the age of 50 for reasons unknown so far.
Stella Tennant, 1997
Source: Getty Images / Rose Hartman
Tennant, who has rarely appeared as a model in recent years, embodied, like her British model colleague Kate Moss, the rebellious and snotty-nosed spirit of a chapter in fashion that followed the glamor and fitness craze of the 80s.
This was already clear in her first important shoot, which took place with one of the most influential photographers of those years.
display
Steven Meisel selected her in 1993 for a series in the British “Vogue”, photographed the sculpture student with a nose ring and immediately caused a mini-scandal.
Her success in fashion was already sealed: A campaign for Versace followed, Alexander McQueen made her a muse and Lagerfeld signed her exclusively as a Chanel ambassador.
Lagerfeld's Chanel show in 2011. At his side: model Stella Tennant
Source: dapd / DAPD
They all loved the mix of boyish short haircut, tart facial features and a long, slim body, a look that was particularly suitable for experimental shoots.
The photographer Tim Walker, known for his over-decorated productions, portrayed Tennant in the Italian “Vogue” as a princess lost in the fairy tale forest. Unlike many of his colleagues, Tennant provided little material for paparazzi photos and tabloids.
She did not get lost in the promises and temptations of this dazzling world, but got married in 1999. With her husband, the French photographer and later retrained as an osteopath, David Lasnet, she was drawn to the Scottish no man's land, where the couple raised four children until they each other separated last August after 21 years of marriage.
Stella Tennant, at the 2011 British Fashion Awards.
In the 90s she was staged as an icon of "heroin chic"
Source: Getty Images / Dave M. Benett
display
Tennant, as strangely remote and cool as her beauty sometimes seemed, appeared at the same time likeable, down-to-earth, a woman who preferred to stomp through Scottish muddy paths in rubber boots and imitate her grandmother's shrill sayings in an interview with American Vogue.
This made her the perfect designer for the traditional British company Holland & Holland, for whom Tennant had in the past few years been photographed in stiff wool skirts, tweeds and tank tops that she had designed together with her co-designer Isabella Cawdor.
When she shared fashion wisdom over the past few years, she spoke of the frugality that comes with age, that comfort counts more than anything else and that she only buys five new items a year.
In her closet there is still a lot from the 90s, she told the Guardian in 2019.
"I'm so glad that thanks to my children they got a second life."
Stella Tennant's first life came to a surprising end just a few days after her 50th birthday.