‘80s, ‘90s supermodel Tatjana Patitz dies

Supermodel Tatjana Patitz has died.

She was 56 years old.

Patitz was featured on magazine covers in the 1980s and 1990s, The Associated Press reported.

She also appeared in George Michael’s music video for “Freedom” alongside Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell, Harper’s Bazaar reported in 2020.

When talking about the music video, Patitz told the publication, “It represents an era in pop culture, and it was at the height of the early ‘90s when the fashion, film and music industries blended together. MTV was huge at the time with all the incredible music videos. I became more recognizable in a different way I think.”

In addition to the “Freedom” video, she also appeared in Duran Duran’s “Skin Trade” video, and as a murder victim in 1993′s “Rising Sun” starring Sean Connery, the Mirror reported.

She was frequently photographed by Peter Lindbergh, who used her for his 1988 photo, “White Shirts: Six Supermodels in Malibu,” and for a cover for British Vogue in January 1990, the AP reported.

Vogue called Patitz “the quietest and perhaps the most intense of the original supermodels” in her obituary, saying that she “never seemed to be part of ‘the pack.’”

Patitz was born in Germany and raised in Sweden, by an Estonian mother and a German father. She was a tomboy and competitive horse rider in 1983 when she entered a modeling contest in Stockholm, earning third place in all of Sweden and winning a trip to Paris and a limited-time contract where she struggled, not getting work for a year, Vogue reported.

But when Lindbergh found her, her world changed with Vogue calling him “the fairy godfather of Patitz’s career.”

Condé Nast chief content officer Anna Wintour called Patitz’s beauty, “always the European symbol of chic, like Romy Schneider-meets-Monica Vitti.

“She was far less visible than her peers—more mysterious, more grown-up, more unattainable—and that had its own appeal.”

Patitz acknowledged her individual look in a 1988 Vogue profile, saying, “people always said that I looked special; that I didn’t look like anyone else. And I was going to make it because of that.”

Patitz spent her downtime at her home in California, away from the lights of Paris or New York, and closer to nature and animals.

By 2006, Patitz said the golden era of supermodels had ended, the AP reported.

“There was a real era, and the reason that happened was because glamour was brought into it,” she told Prestige Hong Kong magazine, according to the AP. “Now the celebrities and actresses have taken over, and the models are in the backseat completely.”

She also had strong words for the newer models, saying the women of her era had healthier physiques, the AP reported.

“Women were healthy, not these scrawny little models that nobody knows their names anymore,” Patitz said.

Patitz had dated several entertainers over the years including Seal, Pierce Brosnan and Nick Kamen, the Mirror reported.

According to her New York agent, Corinne Nicolas from the Model CoOp agency, Patitz’s died in Santa Barbara, California, from an illness, but the specific illness and other details, including when exactly she died, were not released, the AP reported.

Patitz leaves behind her son Jonah, whom she shared with ex-husband Jason Johnson, the Mirror reported.

She had called Jonah her “source of happiness.”

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