Penelope Tree was the ultimate Swinging Sixties ‘It-girl’; her style idiosyncratic, her hallmark look a kind of kooky luminosity that defied convention.
Such was her fame that, when asked to describe her in three words, John Lennon said she was ‘Hot, Hot, Hot! Smart, Smart Smart!’
The innocent daughter of wealthy well-connected parents, she was 18 when she became besotted by the photographer David Bailey, whose charisma was edged with danger. The attraction was instant and mutual. ‘There was an electrical connection between us,’ she reflects now, 56 years later. ‘In some ways he was a terrible, selfish, rampant male but he could also be very sweet and protective. It’s just that he couldn’t resist the women who threw themselves at him. I don’t think many men, put in his position, could.’
Penelope Tree, now 74, was a Vogue model and the muse of photographer David Bailey
Penelope was discovered in 1966 at Truman Capote’s masquerade Black and White Ball
When they met, Bailey’s marriage to the French actress Catherine Deneuve was in its death throes. Penelope spent five-and-a-half years with the man everyone referred to by his surname and their relationship defined the era. It was also plagued by his multiple infidelities, but its vicissitudes helped shape and inform her life. So much so that after decades away from the spotlight, she is back with her debut novel, which draws heavily on her time with him.
Bailey, like his fictional alter ego, was constantly assailed by propositions from beautiful women — even when Penelope was with him. ‘Models would use every seductive trick to get him to look at their books,’ she says. ‘We’d be in a restaurant and a waiter would arrive carrying a silver salver with a little message inside. Bailey would read it covertly then stuff it in his pocket. Women propositioned him all the time: actresses, models; you’d be shocked if I named them.’
‘Oh, do!’ I plead.
‘Well, there was Nathalie Delon, an actress; quite a femme fatale. Another woman who openly went for Bailey was Raquel Welch. They weren’t exactly shrinking violets, nor were they members of the sisterhood.’
At the time, Penelope was crushed by his insatiable philandering. She was an 18-year-old virgin when she first slept with Bailey, then 30, who had been married twice.
She was 18 when she became besotted by Bailey, whose charisma was edged with danger
Their five-and-a-half year relationship was plagued by Bailey’s multiple infidelities
While she was his partner, sharing his North London flat in Primrose Hill, Bailey, it seems, had such a prodigious capacity for sexual infidelity that an ever-changing roster of beautiful women passed through the bed that Penelope had assumed was exclusively theirs.
She finally left him in 1973 when he went off to Paris with the wife of one of his best friends. She packed her bags, ‘perched on what I had naively imagined was my side of the bed — rather than the busy timeshare it actually was — and looked round the room that had seen so much action over the years’.
Sweet-natured and self-deprecating, now 74, she retains her youthful lithe bearing. Recent catwalk shows for Fendi in Milan and Valentino in Paris testify to her enduring appeal. I ask how it felt to return to modelling after a break of half a century.
‘Rather terrifying,’ she smiles, explaining how fashion has changed from a cottage industry to one of the world’s biggest manufacturing industries.
‘When I did catwalk shows in the Sixties, there would be ten models at most, and they had to change at least five times in the course of a show. It was hard work! Now there are 100 models in a show, and each only has to show one outfit. The productions are on a massive scale.’
Today, she wears flat buckled shoes, a pleated kilt (from Zara), a sweater by her friend Edina Ronay and scarf by another friend, Jasper Conran. ‘Look, it has pictures of all his old dogs on it!’ she cries, delighted.
Penelope suffered with anorexia from the age of 14, which was later usurped by bulimia
Post-Bailey, she was married to South African musician Ricky Fataar, with whom she has an adult daughter, and she shares a son with a Jungian psychotherapist, her partner until ten years ago.
She lived in Sydney for 17 years — raising her children, working as a TV researcher, travelling and sitting on the board of several charities — but has now settled in rural West Sussex.
An avid reader, she was 62 when she set about writing her novel: ‘I could no longer find any more excuses not to get down to work.’
Her main character, Ari, fights demons: eating disorders, drugs — and a high-profile bust that lands her in a police cell — as well as late onset acne, which puts an abrupt end to her modelling career. She also documents a dysfunctional relationship with her brittle, socialite mother and discovers her adoring father is bisexual.
All this is paralleled in Penelope’s own extraordinary life. Her mother Marietta was, she tells me, ‘accomplished, beautiful, worldly and sociable — but she just wasn’t interested in being a mother. She lacked warmth. She didn’t say she loved me; she wasn’t demonstrative. She handed me over to a nanny.
‘My mother adored men and had passionate affairs while married to my father and being chatelaine of a grand house in Manhattan.’
Her father Ronald Tree, a former Conservative MP and friend of Winston Churchill, was 20 years his wife’s senior, a devoted father and, she says, ‘genuinely bisexual in that he loved my mother and had affairs with men’.
Vogue’s then editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland, as well as photographers Cecil Beaton and Richard Avedon, all took credit for discovering Penelope in 1966 at Truman Capote’s famous Black and White Ball when she was 16 (she went bra-less in a floor-length gown with two daring side-slits originating at her bust).
A year later, modelling for British Vogue, she met Bailey sitting on the floor of the editor’s office surrounded by contact sheets.
‘We had this big moment of recognition. He was incredibly attractive with a dangerous vibe.’
At this stage, Penelope kept her distance. She had been traumatised by an earlier sexual assault.
‘I had not had a sexual relationship before. I’d had a bad encounter with an older man who’d tried to force me to have oral sex with him. I didn’t tell anyone about it at the time. I thought it was my fault.
‘It was shocking and scary and my body shut down. I grew a protective membrane around myself. I think it all contributed to my later eating disorders.’
Besides, she was aware that Bailey was still married to — although separated from — Deneuve; conscious, too, of another girlfriend.
Then, a year or so on, she ran into him again in Paris.
‘I was modelling for American Vogue, working with Twiggy,’ she recalls. ‘Bailey came to Paris and that was it. Richard Avedon warned me, “Darling, don’t go near him.” Bailey was also being told to leave me alone. So it was bound to happen, wasn’t it?’
She smiles mischievously. And of course it did; their first sexual encounter was in a Paris hotel room.
‘Bailey didn’t know I was a virgin and I was way too scared to tell him. These days girls are a lot more forthright but I was 18, and you didn’t say things like that then. I would have been mortified.’
After a brief interval Bailey went to fetch her from her parents’ house. ‘My mother was extremely patronising to him and he couldn’t bear her. He’d left school at 15 and she thought he was dumb, which he wasn’t. He was hugely knowledgeable about books, films and art.
‘When he came to New York to take me back to London, my mother, who never usually opened the front door herself, on this occasion did. She tried to shut it in Bailey’s face when she saw him, but he jammed it open with a toe of his Cuban-heeled boot and said: “It could be worse, love. I could have been a Rolling Stone.” ’
She laughs at this memory. ‘And I went straight from my parents’ house to living with him in Primrose Hill.’
She forfeited a place to study English literature to be with him. ‘Of course my parents were disappointed. I’d dropped out of university to become a model and live with a 30-year-old man who’d been married twice and had countless girlfriends.’
She was, she now recognises, perilously dependent on Bailey.
‘He became, not just my lover, but a sort of parent figure. I was mature socially — I knew how to talk to people — but emotionally immature.
‘He became my centre of gravity. Without him panic and doubt overwhelmed me. I just could not imagine life without him.’
After a break of fifty years, she is back on the catwalk for fashion houses Fendi and Valentino
Surely, though, she revelled in her success during those heady days?
‘I really enjoyed working with creative people and travelling to amazing places but I never felt as if I were “successful”.
‘I was constantly comparing myself to other more beautiful models and felt I was really just a novelty act.’
She was — and remains to this day — sweetly self-effacing, attributing to other models like Veruschka the poise and grace she (wrongly) felt eluded her.
Allied to her suffocating level of dependency on Bailey was his control; he insisted she ditch her agent, complained if she worked with other photographers and carped if she put on a few pounds.
‘Bailey was consistently affectionate,’ she says, ‘but his mood could turn ominously dark without warning. He could be shockingly hurtful. He had an instinct for the jugular.’
She felt defined by her appearance and eating disorders plagued her. ‘I was no one unless I was thin and, at first, as a model, I was rewarded for being thin,’ she observes.
The anorexia she had been prone to since she was 14 was usurped by bulimia when she was with Bailey.
Then, in her early 20s, she suffered a bout of late-onset acne caused by a hormonal imbalance she believes was brought on by her eating disorders. The acne was so disfiguring it put a halt to her photographic modelling career.
‘I lost my self-confidence completely and it took a long time to come back because it was so caught up in my appearance,’ she says. ‘At that point I just felt as if I was on the rubbish heap of life. It was very difficult.’
Her response was to hang out with friends in the fashion world smoking dope and taking cocaine.
‘I became heavily into drugs — although I never took heroin — and Bailey (who never touched drugs) was really disapproving.’
This self-destructive episode ended when police raided her friends’ flat while Penelope was there, discovering cocaine, marijuana, Drinamyl and Mandrax in her handbag.
She was locked in a police cell for a few hours before a ‘thunderous’ Bailey rescued her, raging at her stupidity.
‘He was extremely disappointed in me, just as a parent would be,’ she recalls.
He engaged a lawyer and Penelope got a conditional discharge. A few months later she summoned the courage to leave him.
Today, she has attained a happy equilibrium and ‘pretty much’ embraced ageing. ‘It’s an ongoing challenge but I’m learning to live in the present and hopefully to see beyond appearances,’ she says.
She still has the easy grace and style that identifies her as a model, but today she welcomes comfort and practicality.
Her face — with the barest hint of make-up — is framed by long blonde hair. She has never had cosmetic work done.
‘I’m not saying I won’t, but I doubt it quite frankly. I make no judgment on those who do. I just try not to look in the mirror too much (which is easy in Sussex) and I’m interested in life. So many books to read; so many things to do. My appearance is not that interesting to me.’
It is one of the liberating corollaries of ageing that she no longer feels defined by her appearance.
She keeps fit by walking and sea swimming; she practises yoga. And she cherishes the memory of the strong women mentors who helped shape her life, among them Vreeland (‘who never did anything to her face’) and her late sister-in-law Lady Anne Tree, a prison rights activist.
Now, in later life, she relishes being single: ‘I don’t have any desire to find a partner and that is a release. I feel really happy on my own. It is great to have time to write and practise Buddhism. I like the solitary life as well as seeing my friends.’
Is she still in touch with Bailey? She is; their friendship is, astoundingly, thriving.
Bailey, 86, now married to his fourth wife Catherine, has vascular dementia.
Penelope has never had work done, saying: ‘My appearance is not that interesting to me’
Her debut novel tells the story of well-bred Ari, who is launched into the modelling world of the Sixties when she is discovered by notorious bad-boy photographer Bill Ramsey
‘But oh God, yes, he still remembers me!’ says Penelope.
‘He’s very on the ball, still very funny. His mind is still pretty good.’
Do you tease him about giving you such a hard time back in the Sixties?
‘Yes, I say: “You really put me through it, didn’t you?” and he laughs and says, “It’s just my nature.” He’s still painting and doing some amazing work. His creative drive was always very linked to his sex drive.’
She reflects: ‘I endured some painful, difficult times with him that affected me deeply and after we broke up we didn’t get along for quite a few years.
‘But he made efforts to mend fences and he has made it clear he still feels close to me. He is incapable of bulls****ing.’
Does she regret the tumult of the 1960s; the febrile intensity of her era-defining relationship with Bailey?
Penelope looks back with equanimity: ‘If difficult things never happen to you, you don’t really wake up, do you?
‘All these young people come up to me and say: “You were so lucky to have lived through the Sixties.” And it was fantastic in many ways, but there was also an ingrained prejudice against women.
‘Bailey was selfish, but he was also great company. He had a strong spirit but he was also vulnerable. He was a mass of contradictions, as I guess we all are. He also made me laugh.
‘He still does. And that counts for a lot.’
Piece Of My Heart by Penelope Tree (£18.99, Moonflower Books) is out today.