Nico: Fame, Heroin & The Velvet Underground

Hello dolls, 🌼 and welcome Nico: Fame, Heroin & The Velvet Underground! Nico was born Christa Päffgen in Cologne in 1938, but the story of Nico begins before she ever became Nico. Her parents, Grete and Willi Päffgen, were married in Berlin in 1933, though Willi’s wealthy Catholic family never truly accepted Grete or their daughter. After Willi died during World War II, Grete raised Christa alone in war-torn Germany. Christa spent part of her childhood in a Nazi-era orphanage, later moved with her mother to the countryside, and remembered seeing trains pass on their way to concentration camps. As a teenager, Christa dreamed of escape. After being rejected as a ballerina, she was discovered outside Berlin’s Kaufhaus des Westens and began modeling for Heinz Oestergaard. Photographer Herbert Tobias became one of the first people to shape her image, renaming her “Nico” after a man he had loved in Paris. Through Tobias and Willy Maywald, she entered the world of European fashion, moved between Paris, Ibiza and the Côte d’Azur, and became a successful young model. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, Nico tried to turn modeling into acting. She appeared in Federico Fellini’s "La Dolce Vita" and became involved with Alain Delon. In 1962 she gave birth to their son, Ari, though Alain refused to acknowledge him. In the mid-1960s, Nico entered the orbit of Bob Dylan, Brian Jones, Andy Warhol and the Factory. Andrew Loog Oldham produced her first single, “I’m Not Sayin’,” but it fail