'Presley never felt good enough. It bothered him enormously': Modeling agency owner tells ROB SHUTER the nasty industry rumor that haunted Gerber as a teenager

Presley Gerber, gone at just 27 years old, was 16 when he made his runway debut for Moschino's Los Angeles Resort show.

Signed to IMG Models the year before, he had already been featured, alongside his sister, Kaia Gerber, in the 2015 edition of the prestigious CR Fashion Book and starred in a Calvin Klein campaign in 2016.

Look at those pictures now. He was a baby.

But the modelling world is no place for a child.

During my time as a celebrity publicist, I worked with some of the world's most elite models: Naomi Campbell, Tyra Banks, Molly Sims, Petra Nemcova. I spent years backstage at their fashion shows and accompanying them on shoots and to parties. The glamour of the fashion scene is spellbinding, intoxicating and potentially dangerous.

At a fashion party in New York in 2010, I watched as a world-renowned model snapped her fingers and a bowl of cocaine appeared as if a waiter were bringing sugar for coffee.

The bowl was passed around the room. Women dipped their fingernails into the powder while others used straws. Perhaps most disturbing, there were young people in that room, socializing with powerful agents, photographers and wealthy men. The pressure to indulge in destructive acts was overwhelming.

Then there was the degrading worldliness of it all.

I remember being with Naomi in 2005 backstage at the Lexington Avenue Armory in New York City. It was Tyra's final runway walk before her long retirement, while models were changing, standing around barely dressed. Wealthy businessmen wandered in and out with astonishing ease.

I often saw Jeffrey Epstein backstage at Victoria's Secret fashion shows. He already had developed a reputation for giving everyone the creeps, but – of course – we had no idea of the depth of his depravity.

Flesh was on display. It was the only currency that mattered.

At a Chelsea Piers fashion shoot for a magazine cover, a gorgeous male model was hired to dance around one of my premier female clients. When I stepped outside the studio to take a phone call one of the young men followed me.

He couldn't have been older than 21 and he offered me sex if I would introduce him to Jennifer Lopez. I was devastated. Here was a beautiful young man who believed that his body was something to be traded away.

Of course, these experiences occurred years ago, but a friend of mine who until recently ran one of the world's top agencies tells me that nothing has changed.

'People like to pretend the business cleaned itself up. It hasn't but they've gotten better at hiding it,' my source said. 'The drugs, the predators, the pressure to be impossibly thin — all of it is still there. The difference is everyone knows what they're supposed to say publicly.'

I can only imagine the pressure that must have been felt by Presley Gerber. One fashion source tells me he struggled with comparisons to Cindy and his sister, Kaia.

'Presley never felt good enough,' the owner of a top agency says. 'He was always in the shadow of his mother and sister. People believed he was getting opportunities because of his parents. That bothered him enormously.'

None of this explains Presley's death nor does it attempt to explain away the decision to indulge in dangerous behaviors. But it does offer some context. The modeling business can be psychologically brutal.

I'll never forget what supermodel Iman, who was supporting Campbell's inaugural fashion show during New York Fashion Week in 2005, once told me about the event.

'They do it in a tent because it's a circus.'

She wasn't kidding.