Tatjana Patitz, a Vogue model who appeared on dozens of fashion magazine covers during her 40-year career after rising to fame in the 80s and 90s, has died. She was 56 years old.
Although the cause of death has not been revealed, Vogue has confirmed that the model recently passed away.
The iconic model was best known for her work in Vogue and also starred in “Freedom!” by George Michael. Music video from the 90s alongside fellow models Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Linda Evangelista.
Patitz, who was raised in Sweden by her Estonian mother and German father, launched her modeling career at 17 when she placed third in a competition in Stockholm in 1983. The prize was a trip to Paris with a limited-time modeling contract – and the rest is history.
“Tatjana has always been the symbol of European chic, like Romy Schneider meets Monica Vitti,” wrote Anna Wintour, content director at Condé Nast and global editorial director at Vogue, in remembrance of the cover star.
“She was much less conspicuous than her peers — more mysterious, more adult, more inaccessible — and that had its own appeal,” Wintour continued.
The Post has reached out to Patitz’s agency for comment.
Although Tatjana was out of work for a year after her stint in Paris, she quickly became a force in the modeling world, according to Vogue. Coupled with her acting experience, her “special” look took her far.
“People always said I looked special; that I looked like no one else,” she told Vogue in a 1988 profile titled “Tatjana: Million Dollar Beauty.” “And I was going to get there because of it.”
She has made a number of screen appearances, including music videos for Duran Duran and Korn as well as films and brief television spots.
She has worked with some of the industry’s most prolific photographers, including Peter Lindbergh whose January 1990 British Vogue cover shoot of Patitz, Evangelista, Turlington, Crawford and Naomi Campbell served as her “birth certificate”. era of supermodels.
“We are deeply saddened by the passing of Tatjana Patitz, a longtime friend of Peter,” the Peter Lindbergh Foundation tweeted Wednesday. “We would like to salute Tatjana’s kindness, inner beauty and exceptional intelligence. Our thoughts go out to his loved ones and especially [her son] Jonas. She will be greatly missed by us. »
Described by the fashion magazine as “the quietest and perhaps the most intense of the original models”, Patitz did not flock to Paris or New York like other aspiring models. Instead, she found solace in the California wilderness and vowed never to sell her soul to the company.
“There were glamorous moments, but it was exhausting,” she told the Guardian in a 2009 interview. “The low points were having to travel so much and being exhausted. I always thought that [fashion and modeling] was not who I was; that’s what I did. It didn’t define me. Living here and coming back to this place was like a sigh of relief in a way.
She is survived by her 19-year-old son, Jonah, whom she described as her “source of happiness”, according to Vogue.