Iman on the cover of yesterday’s Mail On Sunday
magazine, ‘you’. Photography by Daniel Garriga.
Sees the pictures of herself, Every magazine on every shelf…
Here in the UK yesterday, The Mail On Sunday magazine, ‘you’, devoted their front cover and a fascinating five pages within the magazine to
There is a small but startling revelation in Iman’s new book: her husband, David Bowie, king of cool, reveals that he has never been to a fashion show. It seems an absurd omission. But the Bowies, both of them, shun crowds and fuss.
David is a homebody, too, a silent presence at his computer, writing, surfing the net. “His priority is home, he wants to spend time with the baby.”
Although she owns a spectacular Somali temper – she’s an occasional plate-thrower – she may switch to a sudden deference. “I finished the book, and then everybody said, ‘Now it’s all on your husband. He hasn’t done his foreword.’ I said, ‘I can’t ask him. At home, I am the wife, I cook. I can’t tell him to step on it and write my piece.’ So I said, ‘You guys have to e-mail him.’ And of course, he did it in like ten minutes, and he brought it to me. I was expecting some of the modern, hip writing that he does, and I got this very sweet, sensitive foreword about his love for me. I cried when I read it.”
Her book is called – defiantly – I Am Iman. It is part biography, part magazine, so that Iman’s own story resides amid a concoction of interviews and short stories contributed by her famous friends. This apparently baffling format appears to have been inspired by Flair, a fleeting 50s magazine which continues to influence contemporary designers. Apparently, David Bowie is a huge fan who collects original issues.
And here’s David’s response for BowieNet:
‘Other than the third coming of Vanity Fair (1952-1953), Jonathan Barnbrook, who designed ‘I Am Iman’, and myself were also very influenced by Andy Warhol’s ‘Index Book’. ‘Vanity Fair’ was resurrected three times after its original inception in the 19th cent. From 1913 -1935 (with contributions from the likes of Tristan Tzara and Duchamp) then again in 1952 and yet again in its present form. I personally don’t collect Vanity Fair but bought a complete bound set of the 1950’s issues for Iman as a birthday present.
Iman does not throw plates, only dinner parties.’
db