February Editorial
Tatjana Patitz’s gaze in the “Freedom” video (which we Boomers can’t help but know—George Michael’s massive 1990 hit) arrives halfway through the song, but it pins you down: clear yet mysterious, with pale eyes and full lips. A goddess of indecipherable beauty. It wasn’t easy to stand out among Linda Evangelista with her blonde bob, Cindy Crawford naked in the bathtub, a sensually dancing Naomi, and Christy Turlington covered only by a sheet. But she succeeded. With her enigmatic and free charm.
At 56, Tatjana is also the first to leave among the “Big Five,” the five splendid creatures who created the myth of the supermodel. The news of her premature death struck and saddened me. It made me reflect on those 90s and how the concepts of beauty and freedom have changed since then. The photo taken by Herb Ritts, with the five supermodels embracing completely naked, was (and perhaps continues to be) the symbol of pure beauty, but it also represents the manifesto of an era. It was the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s, and from that moment, the lives of these twenty-year-old models changed forever, projecting them into the fashion Olympus and transforming them into the most desirable women on the planet.
Who was actually the most beautiful? I asked myself often in those years, looking over and over at the cult Vogue America photo where they wore only a white shirt. Perhaps Cindy Crawford with her prominent mole that she rightly never wanted to remove, or Naomi, with her lunar skin but still-raw charm?
The simplicity of Christy Turlington, almost the girl next door, or Linda’s feline gaze that strikes your heart with emerald green eyes? For me, the most beautiful was Tatjana, the German, the symbol of European chic. A mix between Romy Schneider and Monica Vitti, as Anna Wintour defined her—much less flashy than her peers, more mysterious, mature, unreachable. So much so that she was the one, much earlier than the others, to leave the runways and covers to dedicate herself to what she held most dear: her passion for nature, her son, and her dogs. She was a beautiful woman but, above all, a free one—the undisputed icon of a period, the 90s, in which perhaps we were all freer.
Even then, as now, we watched the fashion shows, went to the cinema, listened to music, and watched videos, but all this content was internalized without having to be filtered through social media, without the reckless attacks of haters, without the “politically correct” nature of the web that turns every opinion into the subject of fierce criticism. Everyone had their own ideas, tastes, and preferences, but expressed them without the terror of worrying about offending someone. Every expression of creativity and image was freer. The analog world of that time had more limited horizons, but it was certainly healthier and easier than today’s digital world, which allows you to reach immense audiences but leaves you fragile and insecure, a target for keyboard censors. Yes, because today we are obsessed with image and beauty, and even though there is much talk about respect for every individuality, gender, and idea—even if curvy models and girls who do not fit traditional aesthetic standards walk the runway—in reality, everyone has their own idea of beauty and, through social media, feels entitled to judge how fit or out of shape, too thin or definitely overweight a person is. From Her Majesty Chiara Ferragni to Martina Colombari or, most recently, Francesca Michielin: they are all beautiful, strong, and successful women who have had to answer to those attacking them for lingerie photos, sculpted muscles, or pimples on their faces. Tatjana, Cindy, Christy, Naomi, and Linda in the 90s didn’t have this problem; they were all friends, they were beautiful and free, and they became famous without doing Instagram Lives, they never used a filter, and they lived their global fame in a less controversial way.
For us today, that liberty (from judgments, criticisms, or adulations)—Freedom, as the Big Five lip-synced in 1990—comes with a much higher price tag.