Image via vngallery.blogspot.com

Fashion industry insiders are talking about the shocking apparent suicide of supermodel Ruslana Korshunova, an immeasurably beautiful 20-year-old French Elle and Russian Vogue cover model who leapt from her ninth-floor balcony in downtown Manhattan.

I will never forget the first time I saw Ruslana in a London fashion show, ethereal on the runway with her ridiculously long, fairy-princess hair and a melodic new band called Arcade Fire playing in the background. Backstage, I urged her not to cut it, even though I knew her agent would most likely eventually convince her to do so.

Since that moment I wanted to book her for a beauty story, and a little over a year ago, got my chance when we booked her for a shoot. A few days before it, she canceled, the model booker saying something about how she was quitting the industry and moving back to her hometown of Almaty, Kazakhstan. I remember thinking that was crazy at the time, how she was really climbing up the ranks in New York and Paris and why would she give that all up? But you never really know what's going on with someone, do you? I do know that the pressures of the modeling industry can be suffocating for many of these young girls though, and I'm sorry that she didn't just go home when perhaps she wanted to. My thoughts are with her family and friends today.