Penelope Tree

Just the usual well-connected parents securing modelling contracts for their bored and unskilled children: it's still a thing.

Thank you Ronald Tree and Marietta Peabody Tree

I’m sure many people will spot the similarity to Eyes Without A Face.

Some people equated Twiggy and Penelope Tree. Twiggy became beautiful as she grew older. Poor trust fund baby Penelope Tree just became slightly less freakish as she grew older.

I'm sure she made a perfectly serviceable fashion model, when she hadn't pissed off her makeup artist.

Marietta Tree was quite something - John Huston and Adlai Stevenson were her lovers; Babe Paley, Donald Trump, and the Reagans were her friends; and Frances FitzGerald was her other daughter.

You have to remember that when Pen Pen was doing her thing it was highly uncommon for spawn of the aristo classes to do any work, let alone something as wild and glamorous as modeling and being part of the scene. Her odd, alien looks fit it with the zeitgeist.

A face for anime.

Penelope at Truman Capote’s black and white ball at the Plaza. She was one of the youngest guests there and a sensation!

Blame that freak Diane Arbus. fashion was obviously going for the "weird looking waif" look far before kate Moss. Penelope Tree isn't so bad when compared with what has constituted "modelling" since the 90s. Let's keep it full hundred, now. The "leaping, healthy, look like they could easily out a chicken in the oven with one hand" look in modelling was only a "look" in the 1980s-mid 90s. "Wan" has been the most consistent look in fashion modelling.

Here she is at 13 photographed by Dianne Arbus.

Was she any relation to Herbert Berbohm-Tree, an actor famed at the turn of the last century, the star of the original "Pygmalion"?

I'm sure Ronald Tree (Pen's dad) was a descendant, R11. Good catch!

Her mother Marietta was walking with Adlai Stevenson when he collapsed and died of a heart attack on a London sidewalk in 1965.

r12 Ronald Tree was unrelated to Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Herbert's family name was Beerbohm. He added the Tree as a stage name.

What kind of a Tree are you?

I want you to think of me as an old

She aged into a striking, if not conventionally beautiful, woman. She and Kim Gordon look like sisters.

She seems really cool and a very likeable person.

She’s in this Diana Vreeland documentary at about the 42:00, the 45:00, and again at the 50:00 mark.

Love her

She’s the first to admit she didn’t have the typical look of a model.

She was cute and seems like a perfectly nice person! And she didn't have it so easy.

From Wikipedia: Scars from late-onset acne ended her career in the early 1970s: "I went from being sought-after to being shunned because nobody could bear to talk about the way I looked." ☹️

Asked about her mother, Penelope replied:

'And yes, she accomplished many things and lots of men fell for her,' she pauses. 'But she was a crap mother, unfortunately. We had a very tough time relating to each other and although I can genuinely say without any bullshit that I have inherited her strength, I do often wonder what it would have been like to have a loving mother... Or even a mother.'

Her dad was gay and by all accounts a very loving father towards her. She’s definitely had an interesting life.

when she was at the height of her anorexia she looked absolutely nightmare-ish. Like horror movie monster.

I read this biography of Marietta years ago. She had an unusual life, having been raised in a strict religious home and rebelling against that narrow world in some ways, but unable to move with the times in the 60s and support social movements like organized feminism. Parenting wasn't her strength. As a teenager, she predicted her life ahead would be "parties, people, and politics", and she was right.

Nice interview.

Great interview.

IIRC in an episode of AbFab, Patsy reminisces about her modeling adventures with the Tree