To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. “Stella came off the train from Scotland smelling of goats,” Isabella Blow chortled down the phone to me. It was the summer of 1993 and Stella Tennant had been scouted for the December British Vogue “London Babes” story to be shot by Steven Meisel. The portfolio was being orchestrated by Isabella Blow and stylist Joe McKenna and they were searching for striking bluebloods with Meisel-level allure. The wide-eyed, gangly young writer Plum Sykes had also been enlisted on the hunt and remembers the “tiny little passport photo” that was submitted to Isabella, of Stella with her septum ring. “She was remarkable looking,” Sykes recalls, “she came in and she was just so incredibly cool that I was intimidated. She was so level headed and not vain, she wasn’t grand, she was just this really cool beautiful country turnip.” Sykes continues, “She looked like a model but was very grounded. She just looked amazing in a boiler suit—she had that incredible glamour.” “She had a nose ring—quite rusty—and it was very frightening,” Isabella Blow told me, “She reminded me of a farm animal. I can take hard tailoring but a hard look is something else—I was terrified! Her beauty was in her eyes—she was absolutely wild, like a wild bird, a tomboy who’d never worn a dress.”