Swinging sixties fashion icon Penelope Tree sits down with Georgina Godwin to discuss her debut novel, ‘Piece of My Heart’, and her rise to fame at Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball. Plus: her relationship with photographer David Bailey, the skin condition that ended her modelling career and her spiritual awakening. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Memories can be like shifting sands and every time you look back on a stage in your life, you see it somewhat differently.
And I was seeing it as a very incomplete picture.
I had these deep feelings about my relationship with Bailey and everything that went wrong between us and having the skin disease and my career finishing because of it.
That was all very emotional, but I hadn't actually looked at it with a bit of distance and perspective.
Hello, and welcome to the Big Interview.
My guest today is Penelope Tree, often described as an icon of the swinging 60s.
Alongside fellow models Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton, she was photographed at 13 by Diane Arbus, and when she was 17, she attended Truman Capote's famous Black and White ball, which effectively launched her career.
She was spotted by the editor of American Vogue, Diana Vreeland, and photographed by Richard Avedon and Cecil Beaton.
She became the muse of David Bailey and the two had a tempestuous affair lasting several years until a skin condition effectively ended her career.
Now in her mid-70s, she lives in the English countryside and has just published a novel, Peace of My Heart, which, although fiction closely mirrors her early career, describing a dizzying world of drugs, photo shoots and parties, a stormy relationship with a photographer and a spiritual awakening.
I'm Georgina Godwin and I spoke to Penelope Tree on the Big Interview.
Penelope Tree, welcome to the Big Interview.
It's such a pleasure to meet you and have you here with me in the flesh in the studio.
Thank you, Georgina.
I'm really pleased to be here.
Now, your book is called Peace of My Heart.
Yes.
And I am finding that there's very little difference between it and your life.
What made you fictionalize what is essentially, I suppose, a memoir?
Well, it's not actually just a memoir.