Suki Potier
Melanie Susan Potier (November 14, 1947 - June 23, 1981), better known as Suki Potier, was an English model.
Potier was born to Gilbert and Mary (née Moore) Potier in Surrey. She had an older sister, Rosemary Sarah (Sally) Potier, born February 12, 1946. As a teenager, Potier modelled for many great English designers, becoming a favourite of Ossie Clark. At the age of 18, Potier was dating Guinness heir Tara Browne, who was separated from his then-wife, Nicky.
On December 18, 1966, Potier was a passenger in Browne's Lotus Elan, when he drove through South Kensington at high speed, colliding with a parked lorry and died soon thereafter. Potier was not injured. Purportedly, part of The Beatles song, "A Day in the Life" is based on this incident. After the accident, Potier took up with Rolling Stones musician Brian Jones, later saying, "He gave me a shoulder to cry on and he picked up the pieces and made me feel a woman again". The two dated for approximately two years from mid-1967 to early 1969.
Potier moved to a fifteenth-century farmhouse with Jones in the last eight months before his death. The house was once the home of AA Milne, creator of the Winnie the Pooh stories. It was there in the swimming pool that Jones, who had by then left the Rolling Stones, drowned mysteriously. By the time of Jones' death, however, they were no longer a couple. Potier remained friends with the Rolling Stones, going to parties with Mick Jagger, attending the Isle of Wight Festival with Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and other members of the Stones camp.
In the 1970s, Potier married Hong Kong businessman Robert Ho, the eldest son of casino mogul Stanley Ho and Clementina Leitao Ho. Potier and Ho had two daughters, Faye and Sarah. On June 23, 1981, while in Portugal, the couple were both killed in an automobile accident in their Bentley on the road to Cascais,[1] while returning home to their two children, having had a quiet dinner with Robert's mother, who lived nearby.