This icy blonde German with pole vaulter's legs looked like a walking fashion illustration. Inevitably, her greatest asset, all 114cm of them, took her to pole position both on the catwalk and numerous fashion campaigns. For over a decade an international designer show without Nadja and ‘those legs' was unthinkable. Then, the model who when once asked about her work, replied, "My job is to be skinny," vanished, tired of being a clothes horse. She then made occasional appearances in shoots with premier league fashion photographers memorably, the late Richard Avedon. Recently a series of controversial unseen Avedon images featuring Auermann posing with a skeleton have come to light in a show dedicated to the work of the fashion photographer (www.rencontres-arles.com) sparking a huge Nadja revival.

Left: Nadja  in 1995. Right: Nadja in 2008 at the Berlinale International Film Festival