(New York) German model Tatjana Patitz, famous for being part of the group of “original supermodels” of the 80s and 90s featured in a video by musician George Michael, died Wednesday at age 56, her agency said. confirming information from the magazine vogue.
“Tatjana died this morning in California”, where she resided, replied in an email Corinne Nicolas, founder and boss of the modeling agency on the 5e Manhattan Avenue in New York, The Model CoOp.
She did not reveal the circumstances of this disappearance at 56, according to the New York fashion magazine Vogue which revealed the information.
Renowned German fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh, who died in 2019, had always been Tatjana Patitz’s favorite and had photographed her since the 1980s. His foundation said on Twitter that it was “deeply saddened by the passing of Tatjana Patitz, a long-time friend of Peter” and “(wanted) to bow before Tatjana’s kindness, inner beauty and incredible intelligence”.
Born in Germany, raised in Sweden and based in California, Tatjana Patitz “has always been the European symbol of chic, like the meeting of Romy Schneider and Monica Vitti”, declared to her own magazine Anna Wintour, boss of vogue.
She was part of the elite group of “original supermodels” of the 1980s-90s, along with models Estelle Lefébure, Karen Alexander, Rachel Williams, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington. The six women appear in a famous photo taken on a beach in 1988 by Peter Lindbergh for Vogue (“White Shirts: Six Supermodels, Malibu”).
Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford also appear and lip-sing on the voice of George Michael in the famous video clip of the title Freedom!’90 of the British singer-songwriter who died in 2016.
Tatjana Patitz was the ‘calmest and perhaps the most intense of the ‘original supermodels,'” said voguetaking a statement from the model during an interview in 2020: “I never sold my soul”.