Ruslana Korshunova (Руслана Коршунова) was one of the most talked-about faces in fashion between 2005 and 2008 — the model with chestnut hair down to her knees whom the industry called the "Russian Rapunzel." She fronted a Nina Ricci fragrance campaign, appeared on the covers of Russian Vogue and French Elle, and walked for Marc Jacobs, Vera Wang, Kenzo, Paul Smith and Christian Dior before her death in New York in June 2008, four days short of her twenty-first birthday. Her story is remembered for its brightness and for how briefly it lasted, and it deserves to be told with care.
A childhood in Almaty
Ruslana Sergeyevna Korshunova was born on 2 July 1987 and grew up in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Her father, an army officer, died when she was a small child, and she was raised by her mother, Valentina Kutenkova. By her mother's account, Ruslana was a bright, curious girl who attended a school for gifted children and grew up speaking four languages — Russian, Kazakh, English and German. Modeling was not the plan. She was, before anything else, a student.
What set her apart from the other girls in her class was purely physical and entirely accidental: she had never really cut her hair. It fell past her knees, thick and chestnut-coloured, and she wore it the way other teenagers wear a school uniform — without thinking much about it. That hair would change the course of her life.
Discovered in a magazine, not a casting
Most models are found on the street or at an open call. Ruslana was found on a page. In November 2003 a booker named Debbie Jones, from the London agency Models 1, was leafing through an issue of the regional title All Asia when she stopped on a feature about a German-language club in Almaty. One of the students photographed for the article was a teenage girl with extraordinary hair. Jones tracked her down and signed her. Ruslana was fifteen.
The nickname followed almost at once. To editors and photographers used to cropped, styled, sharpened looks, a girl with hair to her knees seemed to belong in a fairy tale, and "the Russian Rapunzel" stuck. It was a gift and, later, a slight burden: the hair became the headline, sometimes ahead of the work itself.
The Russian Rapunzel rises
Ruslana's rise was fast. By 2005 she was working the international collections, and the press had noticed. British Vogue called her "a face to be excited about," and The Sunday Times listed her among the new faces worth watching. She moved between London, Milan, Paris and New York, walking shows and shooting editorials at the relentless pace of the season — a new city most weeks, a fitting one day and a cover shoot the next. The long hair, eventually trimmed to a more workable length once she was based in Paris, remained her signature even after the cut.
Her look was distinctive in a period that prized a certain doll-like delicacy: wide-set eyes, a soft mouth, a face that read as both childlike and grave. Photographers liked the contradiction. She shot for Vogue Italia and other leading titles, and her name grew familiar to anyone following the runways of the mid-2000s. She is still counted among the most recognisable Russian models of her generation.
Nina Ricci and the peak
The high point came with Nina Ricci. Ruslana became the face of the house's "Nina" fragrance campaign — the kind of contract that lifts a working model into far wider recognition. Her image travelled well beyond the fashion press, into department-store counters and the back covers of magazines around the world, where millions of people who could not have named a single show came to know her face. She added campaigns and runway work for DKNY, Blugirl by Blumarine, Clarins, Moschino, Vera Wang, Marc Jacobs and Donna Karan, and her covers for Russian Vogue and French Elle confirmed that she had crossed from promising newcomer to established name.
For a young woman from Almaty who had been discovered by accident in a magazine, it was a remarkable few years. She was, by the accounts of friends quoted after her death, "such a normal girl" — someone who missed her family, kept in close touch with home, and carried the ordinary uncertainties of a person barely out of her teens through an extraordinary and demanding profession.
Life in New York
Ruslana settled in New York, working through IMG Models, and took an apartment in the Financial District. The city suited the pace of her career, but the modeling life at that level is transient and often lonely — long flights, short jobs, new faces every week, and few fixed points to hold on to. She wrote often on social-networking pages, and the entries that survive read like those of many twenty-year-olds: bright one week, low the next, searching. "My dream is to fly," she wrote in one. In another: "I'm so lost. Will I ever find myself?" They are the words of a young person still working out who she was, and they are best read as that, rather than as a diagnosis.
Her death, and the questions that remain
On 28 June 2008 Ruslana Korshunova died after falling from the balcony of her ninth-floor apartment on Water Street in Manhattan. She was twenty. The New York Police Department and the city medical examiner ruled the death a suicide; there was no note, and investigators found no sign of a struggle. She had recently returned from a job in Paris, and friends said she had shown no obvious warning signs.
Her mother questioned the verdict, unable to reconcile it with the daughter she knew, and in the years that followed several writers examined the pressures on young models in the Russia of the 2000s. The most careful of them was the British journalist Peter Pomerantsev, who spent years researching her life for a 2011 documentary and his 2014 book "Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible." He looked closely at a Moscow self-improvement seminar she had attended, and at the isolation of her world, but he resisted a neat explanation. "Nothing quite adds up," he wrote, cautioning that a young person's death rarely has a single cause. That restraint is the right note. Ruslana is remembered less for how she died than for the brief, luminous run of work she left behind, and she is still named among the most memorable faces in fashion history.
Frequently asked questions
Why was Ruslana Korshunova called the "Russian Rapunzel"?
Because of her hair. She grew up in Almaty without ever really cutting it, and it reached her knees. When she was discovered, editors and photographers thought she looked like a fairy-tale figure, and the nickname stayed with her throughout her career.
How was she discovered?
Not at a casting. In November 2003 Debbie Jones of the London agency Models 1 saw her photograph in a magazine feature about a German-language club in Almaty, tracked her down and signed her. She was fifteen.
What was she best known for?
Her Nina Ricci "Nina" fragrance campaign, her covers for Russian Vogue and French Elle, and runway and campaign work for Marc Jacobs, DKNY, Vera Wang, Kenzo and Christian Dior between 2005 and 2008.
When and how did she die?
She died on 28 June 2008 in New York, four days before her twenty-first birthday, after a fall from her apartment balcony. The New York authorities ruled the death a suicide; she left no note. Her family questioned the finding, and no single explanation was ever established.
Is she still remembered today?
Yes. Her images continue to circulate, and her life has been the subject of serious journalism, including Peter Pomerantsev's documentary and book, which treat her story as a window onto the young women who came of age during Russia's fashion boom.