Nick Kamen, a British model who gained worldwide fame after appearing in an advertisement for Levi’s in 1985, has died.

Kamen reportedly died Tuesday at his home in west London following a long illness. He was 59.

Kamen, whose real name was Ivor Neville Kamen, exploded onto the pop culture scene in a mid-80s commercial for Levi’s 501 jeans.

Set to the tune of Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through The Grapevine,” the classic ad shows Kamen arriving at a laundromat, undressing — to the delight of laundromat customers and television viewers — tossing his jeans into a washer, and then patiently waiting… in his underwear.

“This commercial sent the shrink-to-fit jean skyrocketing in popularity in Europe and has since cemented its place in advertising history,” Levi’s said last year.

It also turned Kamen into a bonafide sex symbol, who even impressed Madonna.

The following year, the queen of pop asked him to record “Each Time You Break My Heart,” a song co-written by Madonna and Stephen Bray, which hadn’t made the final track list of “True Blue,” her third album.

The song, for which Madonna provided backing vocals, was the single for his first, and self-titled, album.

Nick Kamen photographed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1987. (ullstein bild Dtl./)

The single cracked the top 5 in the U.K. charts. The album, “Nick Kamen,” peaked at No. 34 in the U.K. charts

On Wednesday, Madonna paid tribute to the late singer on Instagram, sharing a picture of the two of them in a music studio.