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In fact, at the beginning of 1998, the British beauty announced she was retiring from the world that had made her name, as she was pregnant with her first child. In the course of her career, Stella never let her head be turned by the fashion industry. MORE: Remembering Karl Lagerfeld Stella Tennant’s Family "Stella is more in tune with modern fashion trends than Claudia," Lagerfeld told an interviewer. Her predecessor, Claudia Schiffer, was placed aside in favour of the budding model. Meisel was the visionary who saw Stella’s potential, with Karl Lagerfeld later making her the new face of Chanel. "Sometimes I see myself and I have no idea why they booked me." She still found it hard to believe her luck, however. She shot a campaign for Verscace the week after her shoot for Italian Vogue. In her first weeks as a budding model, Stella performed catwalk shows in Paris, Milan and London, as well as undertaking editorial work for US Vogue and Elle. It took a superhuman attempt on the booker's part to persuade her to give it a go. At first, Stella was not keen on pursuing a career in fashion and told her agency booker that she would think about it before calling her. So impressed, in fact, that the next day he took her off to Paris for an Italian Vogue photo shoot. Steven Meisel was impressed with this unsmiling, patrician vision of Britain. Their requests for Stella to remove the piercing fell on deaf ears, and the session took place with the metalwork stubbornly in place. When Stella, a friend of one of the Vogue-ettes turned up for the shoot with a ring embedded, bull-style, in her septum, the fashion set blanched. Steven, the image-maker for American Vogue was in London to do a shoot for the magazine's British counterpart, and had informed the fashion department he wanted non-models. And it appears the budding creative would have made a name for herself in the art world sooner or later if it hadn't been for a photographer called Steven Meisel. Stella attended the prestigious St Leonards School for Girls in Scotland, close to the 1,500-acre sheep farm in the Borders where she grew up, before going to Marlborough College in Wiltshire to study for her A Levels.Īn art foundation course at Kingston Polytechnic preceded a degree course at Winchester School of Art, where Stella embarked upon her sculpting career, the part of her life she described as "my first love". When she wasn't gracing magazine covers, Tennant was an activist promoting conservation and less consumption, with a particular focus on the environmental impact of fast fashion.Stella Tennant was born in 1970, the youngest of the three children of the Honourable Tobias Tennant and his wife Lady Emma, daughter of the current Duke of Devonshire. By the late 90s, Lagerfeld had named her the face of Chanel with an exclusive contract, noting her resemblance to the house's founder Coco Chanel. Deborah Mitford-would have been enough to launch her fashion career, it was her androgynous look, razor-sharp features, and aura of effortless cool that first caught the eye of photographers like Steven Meisel and Bruce Weber in 1993. She also starred in the 2012 London Olympic Games closing ceremony alongside fellow British supermodels Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell.Īlthough her aristocratic heritage-as the granddaughter of Andrew Cavendish, the 11th Duke of Devonshire, and The Hon. Tennant was one of the biggest models in the world, with a career spanning almost three decades that saw her walk the runway and shoot campaigns for almost every major fashion brand, working with some of the most storied photographers in the industry, and serving as muse to legendary designers like Gianni Versace, Valentino Garavani, and Karl Lagerfeld. Scottish supermodel Stella Tennant passed away suddenly on Tuesday, five days after her 50th birthday.