As far as we can ascertain, Monique had attempted suicide by drug overdose, putting her into a coma from which she did not recover. This is the story that has circulated among people who knew her, though we haven’t found official confirmation of it.

That she died by her own hand was sadly not a total surprise to those who knew here well enough to be aware of her extreme depressive side.

Katja Ehrhardt of High Gloss Dolls, one of the model’s favourite photographers and biggest fans who also became a good friend, says she found herself having to talk Monique out of committing suicide on numerous occasions.

Others have spoken of her being lonely, a loner, a woman who found it very difficult to let people get close to her.

Photographers who shot with her typically say that, at her best, she was a talented model possessed of a wicked sense of humour. But many say she could also be moody and difficult to work with.

Despite the distinctly French character of her model name, Monique Charriere was in fact Bulgarian. (Her preferred spelling was Charrière but we’re omitting the grave accent in this article because it confuses internet search engines.)

Monique’s real first name was Maryana (also spelt Mariana), and she was known to friends variously as Micky, Mickey, Miki or Mikki.

She also had a profile on Facebook as Midori Gigovierre, where she shared some of her more personal thoughts.

It was in the timeline of this profile that, in early June, she added two posts that might have set alarm bells ringing for some of those who knew the ‘real’ Monique Charriere.

On June 5 she posted “I haven’t slept for exactly 30 hours” — a potentially dark revelation that ironically attracted only a couple of lighthearted comments.

One of these was from a close Amsterdam friend, Michele de Saint, who contributes some touching insights into Monique’s life later in this article.

On the day after her insomnia post — June 6 — Monique uploaded some lines of verse that, sadly, now stand as her farewell to the world. Taken from the beginning of Edgar Allen Poe’s poem Alone, this post reads:

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov’d — I lov’d alone —
Then — in my childhood — in the dawn
Of a most stormy life — was drawn

The first public indications that Monique Charriere had died appeared on June 21, two days after her death, as comments under her Midori Gigovierre post of June 6. It is therefore likely that she remained in a coma for two weeks from June 6.

The very first person to comment on June 21 under her final post was Nikki Thorn, a well-known UK and international scenester, who wrote, simply: “heartbroken”.

Similar sentiments, along with expressions of shock and disbelief, began to populate the same comment space as a growing number of people realised what had happened. It made me wonder if she ever really knew how many people actually cared about her.

Monique Charriere and I were Facebook friends but I’m not sure I ever met her in person — although I did photograph her on the catwalk of the 2009 German Fetish Ball.

And I certainly featured her on The Fetishistas. In fact her Fetishistas debut was as a cover model — something that happens rarely and is a tribute to the vibrant visual presence that characterised so many of her pictures.

Photographed by Katja Ehrhardt (who also provides the August cover/banner image for this article),Monique Charriere appeared on our March 2011 cover (on the original Fetishistas site) as the poster girl for our feature on Katja’s High Gloss Dolls project.

This was followed by two further appearances on the old site, in galleries accompanying our cover stories on Dutch photographers Me-Chiel (Michiel Kivits) in July 2012 and coJac (Jacco Breedveld) in March 2013 respectively.

Monique Charriere moved around quite a lot, and lived at various times in Berlin, London and Thailand.

However, aside from the incredible work she did with High Gloss Dolls, many of the model’s best known collaborations were with various Dutch photographers during the time she lived in Amsterdam.

And it would be her work with one of these — Peter Diablow — that led to her final appearance on The Fetishistas earlier this year, in the galleries accompanying his cover interview for our March 2017 edition.

All the above photographers have been kind enough to contribute some of their pictures of Monique Charriere, their reflections on her life and their reactions to her death, for this article. You can see their images in four galleries at the bottom of this page.

Another of Monique’s Amsterdam collaborators, filmmaker SG Collins, has also generously contributed two short films he made with the model, which you can find at the end of this article.