L’Wren Scott, a successful fashion designer whose relationship with Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones has been widely chronicled, was found dead in a Manhattan apartment yesterday morning.
A spokeswoman for Ms Scott, Lisa Lupinski, confirmed the death. Police said Ms Scott was found by her assistant at her apartment on 11th Avenue. The cause cause of death appeared to be suicide.
Ms Scott was adopted and raised as a Mormon in Roy, Utah, where, by chance, she met the fashion photographer Bruce Weber. He asked her to go to Paris to model. "I remember thinking, God, you get paid to have your picture taken?" she recalled in an interview in the New York Times .
She got her first big break in fashion working as a model for a Pretty Polly legwear campaign. In recent years, she had built her reputation as a stylist and designer – her clothes hung in the closets of the likes of Nicole Kidman and Michelle Obama. She also worked on costumes for Hollywood movies such as Ocean's 13 .
Writing about her spring collection last year, Cathy Horyn in the Times said that her designs were very much a reflection of her own personality. "Her sense of femininity feels very self-contained, and so can be rattling to others," Horyn wrote, "but it has become her signature look."
Ms Scott declined to state her exact age to interviewers but said she was in her 40s. In the last decade, she became as well-known for her romance with Jagger as for her work on the catwalk.
A spokesman for Jagger told the BBC that the singer was “completely shocked and devastated”.
Ms Scott's most recent show for her eponymous collection was scheduled to take place in London during fashion week last month. However it was cancelled, apparently due to "production delays". – ( New York Times service)