Of the many Vogue covers featuring the model Tatjana Patitz, shot by three generations of star photographers, the best are the least fashiony, those where you do not want to subtract the clothes, makeup and frequent drastic changes of hairstyle inflicted on her, especially in youth. The greatest is from 1988, a tight close-up by Herb Ritts of her face shadowed in chiffon but still so powerful it shakes off the lettering and barcode that clutter the page.
Ritts said Patitz’s features were “a bit off”, which only made her more intriguing to capture. She was barely 23 when she modelled for the sequence from which that cover was cropped, arranging her almost 6ft tall, emphatically curved frame sinuously in body stocking and tights.
That was the year that she was transformed from a model in top-end work into one of the about-to-be-a-phenomenon “supermodels”, when the photographer Peter Lindbergh included her among the unconventional newcomers he took to a California beach to lark before his camera. Even among his cast of wind-mussed, sun-smudged, tanned tall beauties in white shirts, Patitz stood out; she was having as good a time as the others, but seemed to be inhabiting happiness rather than performing it, and radiated it without the toothy rictus standard in fashion images. (Lindbergh loved Patitz, especially when she didn’t smile; they worked together on and off for 30 years.) George Michael made her status clear when he asked Patitz to join her fellow supers, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista and Cindy Crawford, in lip-syncing in his video for Freedom! 90.
