How I survived the Swinging Sixties, by top model PENELOPE TREE

Question

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 Capsules Fake 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.'

READ MORE: How Biba founder Barbara Hulanicki - with a little help from Twiggy - sparked a 60s fashion revolution in 'grey London', and British brand's vintage pieces now sell for thousands on preloved sites




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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.