Christa Päffgen (October 16, 1938?<ref>The date and location of her birth are disputed. Most sources{{Fact|date=February 2008 state October 16, 1938, Cologne, Germany. </ref> – July 18, 1988) was a Germans|German singer-songwriter, Model (person)|fashion model, actress, keyboard player and a Warhol Superstar, best known by her pseudonym Nico.
As a musician, she is remembered for both her time in The Velvet Underground and her solo work.
Career
Early days
Nico made her early fame as a Model (person)|model. After leaving school at 13, she started selling lingerie and soon was spotted by fashion insiders. A year later, her mother found her work as a model in Berlin.
While on a modeling assignment in Ibiza, she met the photographer Herbert Tobias, who christened her "Nico" after his ex-boyfriend, filmmaker Nico Papatakis.{{Fact|date=November 2007 She soon moved to Paris and worked for ''Vogue (magazine)|Vogue'', ''Tempo'', ''Vie Nuove'', ''Mascotte Spettacolo'', ''Camera'', ''Elle'', and other fashion magazines in the late 1950s.
She also claimed to have been briefly hired by Coco Chanel. Despite having dropped out of school at an early age, Nico eventually became fluent in English, Italian, Spanish, and French, in addition to German.
Before breakthrough
After appearing in several television commercia... read all