Stella Tennant was an aristocratic model

LONDON • Stella Tennant, the unimpeachably aristocratic model and inspiration to fashion designers like Karl Lagerfeld and Gianni Versace, died suddenly on Tuesday, five days after her 50th birthday.

Her death was announced in a statement by her family. The cause of death was not given. Police reports noted no suspicious circumstances surrounding her death, according to the BBC.

The granddaughter of Mr Andrew Cavendish, the 11th Duke of Devonshire, and Ms Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire and the youngest of the Mitford sisters, Tennant was directly descended from Bess of Hardwick, builder of the opulent Elizabethan manor Hardwick Hall and once reputed to be the richest woman in England.

Tennant wore her rarefied heritage lightly throughout her three-decade run in fashion, during which she walked the runways for most major fashion designers; was featured in advertising campaigns for nearly every important label; appeared on scores of magazine covers; and worked with a full roster of the world's elite photographers, editors, make-up artists and stylists.

Along with Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss, Tennant was chosen to represent English fashion at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics.

In the late 1990s, Lagerfeld signed her to an exclusive contract as the face of Chanel. In doing so, Lagerfeld noted the very English Tennant's likeness to the incomparably Gallic founder of the fabled house.

Tennant's offhand ease with duality - particularly of class and gender - kept her in demand throughout the decades with fashion designers like Valentino Garavani, Alber Elbaz, Giorgio Armani, Marc Jacobs and Versace, whose family, in a statement on Tuesday, called her the late designer's "muse".

If they admired her beauty, designers also banked on her ability to embody multiple fashion archetypes.

"She was equally beautiful in a tuxedo or a chiffon dress," said Elbaz, who cast Tennant to star in his first advertising campaign for Yves Saint Laurent when he assumed design responsibilities there in 1998 (and soon after Tennant gave birth to her first child).

"She was not really a model," he added. "She was a woman, a mother, English, aristocratic but with a golden heart."

Tennant is survived by her husband David Lasnet, a photographer and osteopath from whom she had separated in August after 21 years of marriage, and four children - Iris, Jasmine, Cecily and Marcel.

NYTIMES