‘One of the originals’: Supermodel Tatjana Patitz dead at 56

The fashion world is mourning “the quietest and perhaps the most intense of the original supermodels”. Tatjana Patitz was 56.

Tatjana Patitz, a Vogue model 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.

While the cause of death has not been revealed, Vogue confirmed that the model died recently.

The iconic supermodel was 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.

Patitz, who was raised in Sweden by her Estonian mother and German father, launched her modelling 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 modelling contract — and the rest is history.

Tatjana Patitz walks the runway during the Chanel Haute Couture show as part of Paris Fashion Week in July, 1991. (Photo by Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

Tatjana Patitz and Mischa Barton at Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2014 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images For Hubert Burda Media)

“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 modelling 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.

Model Tatjana Patitz arrives for the GQ Men of the Year Award at the Prinzregenten Theater in Munich, Germany in 2007. (Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)

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.

Supermodels Helena Christensen and Tatjana Patitz in 1997.

“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 modelling] 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.”

She is survived by her 19-year-old son Jonah, who she described as her “source of happiness,” per Vogue.

This article was originally published by the New York Post and reproduced with permission