Born in New York in 1949, model Penelope Tree is the daughter of Conservative MP Ronald Tree and American socialite Marietta Peabody. At 16, Tree was scouted at Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball. Her collaborations with the photographer David Bailey throughout the 1960s cemented her as one of the style icons of the decade. After the end of her relationship with Bailey, Tree moved to LA and then Sydney, where she married and raised her two children. She now lives in Sussex. Still modelling, she also works for the charity Lotus Outreach. Her first novel, Piece of My Heart, is out now.
I was 17 and working as a reader for the publisher Rupert Hart-Davis, who gave me two hours off for the shoot. The clothes were fantastic, but meeting Bailey felt seminal.
Before then, I’d done some modelling work with Richard Avedon in New York. That was calm and easy, so I expected this to be the same. It was not. As soon as I walked into the room I felt electrically connected to Bailey, this incredible mix of emotions – fear and attraction. He had a great sense of humour, so I was laughing a lot, but I also felt he hated me. Bailey evokes that kind of response. You can see it in my posture – I look a little defensive.
Before Bailey I didn’t know if I’d keep modelling. I was really into my job as a reader, and people told me I didn’t belong as a model. I’d go to castings at big corporate companies and they’d laugh at how I looked. I was a bit miserable, standing in front of a group of strangers who made comments about me, as if I were an object. But that’s just the business.
After this shoot, however, the die was set. The thing was, Bailey was married [to Catherine Deneuve] and an affair was a really big deal back then, so I tried to switch off my feelings. He and I went for lunch at La Trattoria Terrazza in Soho with a mutual friend, and it was very awkward to have all that energy between us witnessed by a third person. We never spoke about it. About three months later, Bailey appeared in New York. He had come to see me. I had a sense that something would happen, as one often does.
Oddly enough, I don’t think we worked all that well together. At the beginning it was good. After his marriage ended, we lived in Primrose Hill in London for five years. He let me do what I wanted in terms of modelling. But familiarity breeds contempt. We were fighting quite a lot. I never felt like his muse. He had a lot of muses and didn’t ever make me feel as if I was the only one.