Stella Tennant (17 December 1970 – 22 December 2020) was a British model and fashion designer, who rose to fame in the early 1990s and had a career that spanned almost 30 years. From an unconventional aristocratic family, she worked with Helmut Lang, Karl Lagerfeld, Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen, and Gianni Versace. She worked for haute couture names like Valentino, and Dior by John Galliano and with photographers Steven Meisel, Bruce Weber, Paolo Roversi, and Tim Walker. Over the years she appeared in advertising campaigns for Calvin Klein, Chanel, Hermès and Burberry.
Tennant won VH1/Vogue Model of the Year Award in 2001, Model of the Year at the 2011 British Fashion Awards and the Contribution to British Fashion award at the Harper's Bazaar Women of the Year 2016 awards; she was also inducted into the Scottish Fashion Awards Hall of Fame as Model of the Year in 2012. At the 2012 Olympic Games in London, she was one of the British supermodels, with models Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss, walking the runway in the closing ceremony.
In 2016, she co-designed a collection with Lady Isabel Cawdor for the Chanel owned London-based brand, Holland & Holland. She also ran Tennant & Son, a line of hand-knitted cashmeres and a luxury homewares company with her sister. For the last decade, she devoted most of her time to looking after her four children and promoting sustainable causes.
She died on 22 December 2020 shortly after her 50th birthday. Her family announced the following month that she had died by suicide after being unwell for a prolonged period.
She was the granddaughter of Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire and his wife Deborah Mitford, the youngest of the Mitford family. Stella was a great-niece of the flamboyant socialite Stephen Tennant, of war poet Edward Tennant, and of William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington who married Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy (a member of the Kennedy family and younger sister of U.S. President John F. Kennedy). She was also directly descended from Bess of Hardwick, a notable figure of Elizabethan English society, and a fourth cousin-once-removed to Diana, Princess of Wales.
Tennant appeared on fashion catwalks for Shiatzy Chen, Bill Blass, Dior and Chanel. She was a Muses for the designers Karl Lagerfeld, Gianni Versace, Alexander McQueen, Nicolas Ghesquière, Riccardo Tisci and Victoria Beckham. She also appeared in numerous other advertising campaigns, including Calvin Klein, Hermès, and in 2002 in an influential campaign for Burberry. In 2010, she starred in L.K.Bennett's Spring Summer campaign photographed by Tim Walker. During the Closing Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, Tennant, along with Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss, was one of the British models wearing fashions created by British designers specifically for the event.
In 2016, Tennant and Lady Isabella Cawdor premiered a new ready to wear collection they designed for the gunmaker and clothing retailer Holland & Holland. She continued to sculpt, and with her sister, a gilder, operated a luxury homewares company, Tennant & Tennant.
In August 2014, Tennant was one of 200 celebrities who signed a letter to The Guardian newspaper expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.
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