Tatjana Patitz, the '80s supermodel who never sold her soul, dies

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Mysterious

and unattainable, as Anna Wintour has defined her,

passed away this Wednesday at just 56 years of age.

"Tatjana died this morning in California", where she lived, confirmed Corinne Nicolas, founder and head of The Model CoOp modeling agency, located on Fifth Avenue in

, in New York, although she has not revealed the circumstances of the death. .

The German model was part of the group of "original supermodels" of the 80s and 90s, those mythical top models that appear in 'Freedom!, '90' the video of the musician

, and who also starred in one of the most Famous by

.

The renowned German fashion photographer, who passed away in 2019 and was always Patitz's favourite, photographing her since the 1980s, helped create the legend of those women, including

and

The relationship between

and the photographer went far beyond the professional;

in fact, the

has been among the first to express its "deep sadness at the death of Tatjana Patitz, a long-time friend of Peter's," they said.

Tatjana Patitz at the 1992 Karl Lagerfeld winter show.GETTY IMAGES

An atypical supermodel

Born in Germany to an Estonian mother and a German father, raised in Sweden and based in California, Tatjana Patitz "was always the symbol of European chic, something like the mixture of

and

", Anna Wintour has said in her own magazine, global head of Vogue.

And although she was part of the elite group of so-called "original supermodels" of the 1980s and 1990s, along with

and

-the six women appear in the famous photo taken on a beach in 1988 by Peter Lindbergh for Vogue ('White shirts: six supermodels, Malibu')-, she always stood out from her peers;

Tatjana, in addition to impressing half the world on the catwalks thanks to a heart-stopping body and a seductive look, she wanted to lead a quiet life, away from the spotlight.

That is why she moved away from

and found her place in

, a place where she could be closer to nature and champion the defense of the environment that she also made her own.

Tatjana Patitz shows the Etro fall winter collection in Milan, in February 2019.GETTY IMAGES

Patitz

was the "quietest and perhaps the most intense of the original supermodels,"

says of her in her magazine, echoing a statement the model herself gave in a 2020 interview: "I never sold my soul."

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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