Abbey Lee Kershaw makes a miraculous recovery from surgery to walk in Kanye West's show

After his mercilessly-slaughtered first collection, the only way was up, frankly, for Kanye West's sophomore show in Paris. The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others, gave yesterday's show much kinder reviews. In other terrific news for West, Abbey Lee Kershaw apparently made such a rapid recovery from last week's knee surgery, she beat a path to his backstage door to walk the show for the second season - at least according to a number of media outlets.

"Top models Jordann Dunn, Karlie Kloss, Joan Smalls and Abbey Lee Kershaw worked the dry ice laced runway in a number of body-hugging designs made of sumptuous leather" reported The Huffington Post, while examiner.com noted, of West's celeb frow-er Kim Kardashian, "Decked out in chunky fur, much like the furs featured in Kanye’s collection and worn by model Abbey Lee Kershaw, Kim Kardashian peered defiantly at photographer Pascal Le Segretain as he captured her with his artistic lens".  

Trouble is, we are having difficulty locating any photos of Kershaw on West's FW1213 runway. 

This includes photo number four in a gallery of images published on the website of The San Francisco Chronicle newspaper - which is captioned “Abbey Lee Kershaw walks the runway during the Kanye West Ready-To-Wear Fal/Winter 2012 show as part of Paris Fashion Week”. This is not Kershaw, but Russian Anna Selezneva.

Then there's the little matter of the orthopaedic surgery.

As revealed by frockwriter, Kershaw was due to have knee surgery in New York last week. Although the information had been confirmed by her Australian agency Chic Management, if there had been any doubts, on March 1st Kershaw's New York agency Next Model Management Tweeted a photo of Kershaw in what looks very much like a hospital room, with a heavily-bandaged left knee (above), together with the caption:

  "Still beautiful after knee surgery... Feel better soon, @AbbeyLee126"  

Keyhole surgery can seem miraculous at times and of course let's not underestimate the skills of New York orthopaedic surgeons. 

We are willing to concede that stranger things have happened. But for anyone else who doesn't think it beggars belief that someone who had knee surgery on February 28th, would seriously contemplate jumping on a plane to walk in a fashion show for Kanye West or anybody else, here is confirmation from Kershaw's New York agent Stephen Lee at Next Model Management. He told frockwriter:

"Abbey was definitely not in Paris this season due to knee surgery last Tuesday in NY. She is currently recovering with physical therapy and we are hoping to have Abbey back to work shortly". 

And here is Kershaw's self-portrait with surgically-modified knee, sent by Lee overnight as evidence that she is still recuperating:

 Get well soon Abbey!