There are few things as short-lived as the career of a fashion model. These exquisite creatures are elevated to fashion fame before they are old enough to vote and declared obsolete by the time they can take their first legal drink of alcohol. For models of color, their time in the spotlight--when their name is on every designer's lips and their face in all the glossies--is cut even shorter.

These days, only the most die-hard followers of fashion could probably put faces to names such Noemie, Beverly, Kiara, Alek and Oluchi. But they, and a handful of other black models, all had their time on fashion's biggest catwalks. Most of them had their greatest success in the late 1980s and the early 1990s.

I had just started covering the fashion industry, and at the time, I thought they'd be around forever. They seemed poised to become the next generation of iconic black models. Surely, they would follow in the footsteps of women like Naomi Simms, Beverly Johnson and Iman--women who broke through color barriers and went on to become modern symbols of beauty and successful entrepreneurs. Or so it seemed.

Mostly, they just quietly faded away. Some found other passions to occupy their time. Oluchi, for instance, found love with designer Luca Orlandi and would occasionally walk in his Luca Luca runway show. But others simply fell out of favor. In the fashion industry, race and ethnicity are treated like fads. When Seventh Avenue gets bored, it means your "look" is over. Honestly, if you blinked, you would have missed the black-girl moment.

I'm thinking about that hiccup in recent fashion history, when black models were the rage, because of the sad news about Beverly and Noemie. That would be the models Beverly Peele and Noemie Lenoir. Peele was in a car accident recently and is reportedly in serious condition in a Los Angeles hospital. Lenoir, who is French, was found in a Paris forest following a failed suicide attempt. I wish them both well.

I'm reminded of how often I'd see Peele on the runway and that she'd been in the George Michael Too Funky video, the one with all the Thierry Mugler gear. But I was thinking that of all that Peele accomplished on the runway, she may be most remembered for her run-in with the law over identity theft. She was the one misusing credit cards, not the other way around.