Tatjana Patitz, a Vogue supermodel who appeared on dozens of fashion magazine covers in her 40-year career after skyrocketing to fame in the ’80s and ’90s, has died. She was 56.
The iconic catwalk stunner’s agent, Corrine Nichols, confirmed on Wednesday her passing from breast cancer at her home in Santa Barbara, Calif.
Patitz was perhaps most known for her work in Vogue and also starred in George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90” music video alongside fellow models Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, and Linda Evangelista.
Raised in Sweden by her Estonian mother and German father, she launched her modeling career at 17 when she placed third in a contest in Stockholm in 1983. The prize was a trip to Paris with a limited-time modeling contract — and the rest is history.
“Tatjana was always the European symbol of chic, like Romy Schneider-meets-Monica Vitti,” wrote Anna Wintour, the chief content officer of Condé Nast and global editorial director of Vogue, in remembrance of the cover star.
“She was far less visible than her peers — more mysterious, more grown-up, more unattainable — and that had its own appeal,” Wintour continued.
The Post has reached out to Patitz’s agency for comment.
Although Tatjana was without work for a year following her stint in Paris, she soon became a force in the modeling world, according to Vogue. Coupled with her background in acting, her “special” looks took her a long way.
“People always said that I looked special; that I didn’t look like anyone else,” she told Vogue in a 1988 profile titled “Tatjana: Million Dollar Beauty.” “And I was going to make it because of that.”
She made a number of on-screen appearances, including music videos for Duran Duran and Korn as well as films and brief television guest spots.
She worked with some of the most prolific photographers in the industry, including Peter Lindbergh whose January 1990 British Vogue cover shoot of Patitz, Evangelista, Turlington, Crawford, and Naomi Campbell served as the “birth certificate” of the supermodel era.
“We are deeply saddened by the passing of Tatjana Patitz, a long-time friend of Peter’s,” the Peter Lindbergh Foundation tweeted Wednesday.
“We would like to salute Tatjana’s kindness, inner beauty, and outstanding intelligence. Our thoughts go to her loved ones and particularly [her son] Jonah. She will be immensely missed.”
Described by the fashion magazine as “the quietest and perhaps the most intense of the original supermodels,” Patitz didn’t flock to Paris or New York like the other aspiring models. Instead, she found solace in the nature of California and vowed to never sell her soul to the business.
“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] wasn’t who I was; it was what I did. It didn’t define me. Living out here and coming back to this place was like a sigh of relief in a sense.”
On her Instagram, Patitz referred to herself as an “animal lover” – in addition to self-proclaimed title “lover of nature” – and she even appeared in multiple PETA campaigns.
In 1993, the “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” advert featured a bare Patitz alongside fellow models Emma Sjöberg, Heather Stewart-Whyte, Fabienne Terwinghe and Campbell, while promoting the group’s “Models of Compassion” petition signed by models who vowed to never don fur. The late supermodel also posed next to a cow in the organization’s “Live and Let Live” campaign for vegetarianism.
“Patitz became a supermodel, but PETA will always remember her as a model of kindness,” PETA Vice President Lisa Lange told The Post in an emailed statement.
She is survived by her 19-year-old son Jonah, who she described as her “source of happiness,” per Vogue.
