Sacre bleu! Stella splits from gallic beau
WHAT on Earth is going on with aristocratic marriages?
Last week I revealed the Earl and Countess of Mornington, Arthur Wellesley and Jemma Kidd, had split after 15 years. Now I’m told that, sadly, Britain’s most famous aristocratic supermodel, Stella Tennant, has split from her husband David Lasnet after 21 years of marriage.
Stella met David while at the height of her fame, when he was a dashing
French photographer assigned to a New York shoot with her.
After a high- profile society wedding, they settled down near her parents’ sprawling 16th Century estate in the Scottish Borders. David became an osteopath, and the couple went on to have four children, now aged between 15 and 22.
I’m told Stella – granddaughter of the 11th Duke of Devonshire and Deborah Mitford, one of the notorious aristocratic siblings – and her husband quietly separated earlier this year.
The couple own a property empire that includes a luxury mews house in Edinburgh and a stately home near her father’s estate.
Stella, 49, was known for her androgynous looks during her 1990s modelling heyday.
Her first shoot made the cover of British Vogue in 1993, and at the end of that day’s work she was asked to do a Versace campaign in Paris, which ended up as the cover of the Italian edition.
David will now have to eat the words he once uttered in an interview in which he asserted: ‘ There’s nothing better than growing old together.’
But then he conceded: ‘And it’s very easy to destroy something.’