Tatjana Patitz, a member of the elite group of supermodels who graced covers of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as in the video “Freedom! ’90” by George Michael, she has died at the age of 56.
Patitz’s death, which occurred in Santa Barbara, California, was confirmed by her agent in New York, Corinne Nicolas and the Model CoOp agency. Patitz died of illness, Nicolas said, without disclosing other details.
Patitz, who was born in Germany, grew up in Sweden and later lived in California, was part of the “original” supermodel group and appeared in Michael’s video along with Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford.
She was a favorite of fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh, who highlighted her natural beauty in her famous 1988 photograph “White Shirts: Six Supermodels, Malibu” and for the 1990 British Vogue cover — prompting Michael to summon the group for their video in which the models pantomime singing, according to Vogue.
The magazine quoted its global editorial director, Anna Wintour, as saying that Patitz was “always the European symbol of chic, like Romy Schneider mingling with Monica Vitti. She was much less conspicuous than her colleagues, more mysterious, more mature, more unattainable — and that had its own charm.”
In a 2006 interview, Patitz said that the golden age of supermodels was over.
“There was a real time and the reason it happened is because you glamorized it,” she was quoted as saying in Prestige Hong Kong magazine. “Now celebrities and actresses have taken over, and models have been completely pushed aside.”
She also noted that models of her time had healthier bodies.
“The women were healthy, they weren’t those little skeletal models that nobody knows the name of anymore,” she said Patitz.