Style Muse - Stella Tennant

I know I've posted on my style crushes before - Stella McCartney and Jenna Lyons being two of them, but I'm keen to introduce a few new regular features to the blog, so I'm kicking off with 'Style Muse', and as London Fashion Week S/S '14 is in full swing, it seems only fitting that my first 'muse' is the very down to earth and beautiful Brit model and mother, Stella Tennant.

Vogue UK July 2013 - Photo: Bay Garnett

I have been an admirer of Tennant's style since way back in December 1993 when Steven Meisel shot a now legendary photoshoot for UK Vogue entitled "Anglo-Saxon Attitude." Featuring 'real' people chosen by the late, great stylist Isabella Blow, I remember being blown away by Tennant in all her grungy aristo-punk, nose-ringed glory. 

Vogue UK December 1993 - Photo: Steven Meisel

Vogue UK December 1993 - Photo: Steven Meisel

Vogue UK December 1993 - Photo: Steven Meisel

She was everything I wasn't (and 20 years later still is) - different, edgy, simultaneously feminine and androgynous and I loved the whiff of street style anarchy mixed with upper class elegance, which over time has become something of a Stella trademark. Tennant is after all the granddaughter of the Duchess of Devonshire, (the beautiful and stylish chatelaine of Chatsworth house and a Mitford sister to boot), which all adds up to a heady mix of 'Downton' and down town (if you'll pardon the pun).

Vogue UK - Photo: Mario Testino

The Duchess wrote very entertainingly about the above shoot as follows:

"Darling Paddy,
Stella came. We had to be together in a photo for Vogue's 90th birthday come Christmas. So one Mario Testino, famous photographer, came in a helicopter with a crew of makeup, hairdresser, “fashion editor”, etc from London.
I've got a really beautiful dress, grand evening, given me by Oscar de la Renta, so that was my kit. They bound Stella's legs, up to where they join her body, in tartan. A Union Jack flag hung from her waist & her top was what my father would have called meaningless.
Hair skewbald/piebald, all colours & stuck up in bits. THEN they produced “shoes” with 6 inch heels. More stilts - she could hardly put one foot in front of the other, wobbling & toppling.
We looked just like that Grandville drawing of a giraffe dancing with a little monkey. I was the monkey.
Much love
Debo
(Letter from In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor)

A Mitford grandaughter through and through.

Vogue UK November 2005 - Photo: Tim Walker

After all these years, and despite taking time off to concentrate on her children,  at 43 Tennant is still hugely in demand as a model. In this youth-obsessed era that we live in, here is a woman who combines both her family (she is a mum of 4) and fashion lives with grace and ease,  and whose attitude to ageing is to totally disregard it, which I love. As hot new designer Joseph Altuzurra commented when casting Tennant in his first full-page ad for this year's US Vogue September issue:  “She’s really an Altuzarra woman because she has a life and four kids—she is who she is on her own terms. She lives in Scotland and is incredibly successful and there is a confident, unapologetic side to her. I didn’t want a 20-year-old model, I wanted someone who is our woman. Clothes are part of her life but not her entire life.”

A/W 2013 Altazurra - Photo Inez & Vinoodh

'On her own terms' sums Tennant up perfectly - she embodies that subtle sense of British eccentricity and 'I don't give a damn' attitude that I find so inspiring. To me she is the consummate fashion chameleon - no-one does punk or aristo-elegance like she does and regardless of who she is working with - Lagerfeld, Testino, Bruce Weber et al, she remains true to herself - one classy lady.

Valentino Haute Couture for the WSJ - Photo: Daniel Jackson

Vogue UK September 2012 - Photo: Mario Testino

Vogue UK September 2011 - Photo: Javier Vallhonrat

Vogue US September 2010 - Photo: David Sims

Her latest Vogue shoot in July of this year was photographed and styled by her good friend Bay Garnett and offers us a snapshot of her family life in Scotland. Her comment about her children's bedrooms made me laugh - I'm afraid I'm somewhat the same about what goes up on the walls of my boys room...  She's as much at home yomping in a field as she is on the catwalk, plus her love of  Scotland and the sea and her attitude to life in general only make me like her more. Yup, I've got a proper girl crush going on.

Vogue UK July 2013 - Photo: Bay Garnett

Vogue UK July 2013 - Photo: Bay Garnett

Vogue UK July 2013 - Photo: Bay Garnett

Vogue UK July 2013 - Photo: Bay Garnett

Vogue UK July 2013 - Photo: Bay Garnett

You can keep your Caras and your Kates, as all eyes are on Britain's fashion exploits this week, there's only one girl for me - for your brains, beauty, mothering style and knock 'em dead attitude Stella - you're a star.

Rites of Passage

Summer's over, it's back to school and back to my blog, however before I get back to posting about daily life, style, fashion and the like, I need a moment of introspection.  Sitting here at my desk, with the late Summer sun pouring in through my window I'm reflecting on all that has happened over the past two months. You may well ask where have I been all this time and why the silence?  Well it's been a funny old Summer really, life has thrown itself at me in ways I couldn't possibly have imagined and I have lived to tell the tale, the same person yet fundamentally changed.

Photo: Pinterest

You see, my beloved Dad died suddenly during the first week of the Summer holidays and the axis of my existence has shifted irrevocably. Nothing can prepare you for the gaping hole of grief that threatens to swallow you whole, turn blue skies grey, laughter to tears and hope to despair.  It feels as if you will never emerge back into the blinking light of normality and yet you have to, and everyday life pulls you back into the moment and you carry on, somehow.

My Dad was a warm, generous family man and in his heyday a true bon viveur and the life and soul of any party. I have one beautiful older sister, and if he ever wanted boys, he never let on - we were his girls and he loved us fiercely, expecting the best from us and wanting the best for us. He taught me a myriad things: how to ski, how to mix the perfect G&T,  how to stand up for myself, how to expect high standards in life, how to love. Long before Wikipedia there was my Dad - he knew everything about anything, even the most obscure facts and his thirst for knowledge was infectious - there are still some really weird things that I find myself knowing, all thanks to him.

My parents would have been married for 52 years today and the poignancy of today's date brings the memories flooding back as they have been all Summer.  When a person is still with us but nearing the end of their life, you tend to only concentrate on the here and now, the difficulties, the problems, the rigours of old age, the sadness and pain of ill health. Yet now I find myself on the other side of this inevitable rite of passage, the stories, scenes and souvenirs of my past are vibrantly replayed, as if I am watching my early life on Super 8 - the picture is a bit distorted, the sound isn't always clear, but the images still burn bright and remind me that all these pieces of the puzzle are what makes me who I am today.

My father had the most wonderful hands - strong, square, warm, firm hands that could soothe away all ills with one stroke on the forehead, and I find myself doing the same for my two boys. Walking hand in hand he would give mine a squeeze and I would squeeze back, a little thing I have taught both my boys to do, and so the family traditions continue. What I wouldn't give to hold those hands again, but in my heart I do. The writer John Niven wrote a very moving article recently about losing a family member that closes with the Philip Larkin quote "What will survive of us is love." I couldn't have put it better myself, except perhaps to quote Dad who would have said "If life gives you lemons, make gin and tonic." Cheers, my wonderful Da.