German model Nadja Auermann rose to supe-level stardom in the nineties alongside the Cindys, Claudias, and Christys of the world—with whom she starred in the iconic Avedon Versace campaign—but has largely left the runways in recent years, preferring to focus on her acting career and family. But for Markus Ebner, editor in chief of the German fashion glossy Achtung Mode, Auermann was too good to let go. He coaxed her back to the page a year and a half after the birth of her third child for the cover of his latest issue, dedicated to another homegrown German innovation: techno. “Techno was born in Berlin,” the story has it. “And so was Nadja Auermann, the city’s most famous blonde beauty and Helmut’s most Newtonesque face and figure of this capital.”
Ebner and photographer Ralph Mecke took Auermann to the clubs where techno was born to shoot Auermann in Gareth Pugh, Dior Homme, and YSL. “Germany seems to produce an iconic blonde model every few years,” Ebner tells Style.com. “To photograph them is one of the linchpins of Achtung. There is Claudia Schiffer, Toni Garrn, Christina Kruse, and Julia Stegner, [but] the coolest-looking was always Nadja Auermann, often photographed in a subversive and sexy way by Helmut Newton, her fellow Berliner.” “Nobody else looks like Nadja,” Mecke adds. “She is the anti-Barbie doll—not from the cookie cutter model maker factory. Striking, unafraid, and elegant with an edge.”
The cover debuts exclusively on Style.com, as does the video below, which features Auermann at Berlin’s legendary Tresor, the club where techno was born, set to an unreleased track by Berlin’s DJ Fetisch.