Tatjana Patitz
One of the original ‘supermodels’ who blazed a trail in a classic Vogue cover ushering in the 1990s
TATJANA PATITZ, who has died of breast cancer aged 56, was one of the so-called “supermodels” famously photographed by Peter Lindbergh for the cover of British Vogue in January 1990, alongside Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford and Linda Evangelista, and the same year she appeared with the others in George Michael’s video for his hit single Freedom! ’90.
The Vogue cover, featuring a black and white photograph of the models wearing jeans and plain tops, marked a turning point from the 1980s, when top models were mostly identikit blonde clothes horses with little in the way of “backstory”, to a period when fashion shows and ad campaign images became a part of pop culture.
“Every five years or so,” Vogue wrote, “a handful of young women at the peak of their profession seem to encapsulate the look of the time.” Models became global celebrities, commanding huge fees (Linda Evangelista famously said that she would not get out of bed for less than $10,000), attending exclusive redcarpet events and dating actors and musicians. The “Supers”, as they were known, were personalities with (preferably loud) opinions and (preferably fiery) temperaments.
But with her sense of humour and perspective Tatjana Patitz never seemed to be part of the gang. A passionate horse lover, the “forgotten supermodel” chose to live in Malibu, California, rather than New York or Paris, preferring the company of family and animals to jet-setting, red-carpet glitz and A-lister parties.
As a result she retained an air of mystery that added to her allure. As Anna Wintour, chief content officer of Condé Nast and global editorial director of Vogue, has recalled: “She was far less visible than her peers – more mysterious, more grown-up, more unattainable – and that had its own appeal.”
With her catlike eyes and perfect bone structure, Tatjana became the face of numerous campaigns, including Chanel, Calvin Klein, Versace and L’oréal; she was shot by the best photographers in the business. But as she explained to The Guardian in 2017, she had never been very interested in fashion: “I always thought that wasn’t who I was; it was what I did. It didn’t define me.”
She felt puzzled by the term that was coined to describe her and her 1990s colleagues. “Supermodel… What does that even mean? I never really understood that word,” she told the Telegraph’s Kate Finnigan.
Tatjana Patitz was born in Hamburg on March 25 1966 to a German travel journalist father and an Estonian mother, a dancer at Le Lido in Paris; she was brought up in Skanör, a quiet beach town in Sweden. As a child she learnt to ride horses and enjoyed horse camps at the family holiday home on Mallorca.
In 1983, aged 17, she entered an Elite model contest in Stockholm and was placed third. Put under contract, she moved to Paris to begin working as a model. At the end of 1985 she appeared on her first major cover, for British
Vogue.
She went on to model for Versace and Chanel, and appeared in print advertisements for Calvin Klein and Revlon and in catwalk shows. She graced numerous magazine covers and forged an enduring collaboration with the American photographer Herb Ritts, who observed: “Her features are a bit off; she’s not a typical, commercial beauty, but when I shoot her, I’m never bored. Her looks have power, strength, intensity.”
The pinnacle of her career, in fact, came before Lindbergh’s famous Vogue
cover, when in July and August 1989 she featured on consecutive covers of American Vogue. In the fashion industry 1989 became known as “the era of Tatjana”.
She continued to enjoy success into the 1990s and beyond, working for fashion houses and designers including Chanel, Versace, Ferragamo, Valentino, Karl Lagerfeld, Donna Karan, Jean Paul Gaultier and Vivienne Westwood, and for cosmetics companies such as L’oréal, but there were always more important things in her life than fashion.
In the late 1980s, fed up with the constant travelling involved, she began slowing down her modelling career to develop other aspects of her life and bought a ranch in Malibu, which she filled with horses, cats and dogs.
She studied acting and in 1993 was in a Sean Connery film, Rising Sun, which sank without trace, and took up causes including the environment and animal rights. Matthew Rolston, who often photographed her for Harper’s Bazaar, noted her extraordinary emotional depth: “She’s very dear, charming and extremely feminine. She’s very open and her priorities are natural things – animals, the sea, the environment. That’s what’s so interesting about her. She’s not what she seems.”
In 2003 she married Jason Johnson, a marketing executive, with whom she had a son, Jonah, the next year. But she separated from his father when her son was a year old (they divorced in 2009), and took time out of the limelight to look after him: “I wasn’t interested in weaning him as quickly as possible and getting back to work,” she told The Daily Telegraph. “I wanted to enjoy it and be a mom.”
In 2009 she admitted that though she would not turn down a lucrative advertising campaign, she had no desire to return to the catwalk. After 22 years in Malibu she moved to Santa Barbara.
Her son survives her.